I did an analysis of the strength-of-schedule for the men's basketball team from last season compared to the projected strength-of-schedule for next season now most of the schedule is known:
-- 6 non-con cupcakes in Hilton
-- 1 Big 12/Big East challenge (Marquette at Iowa State)
-- 1 true road game (Iowa)
-- 3 games in Maui (against Auburn, Colorado, UConn, Dayton, Memphis, Michigan St., or UNC... we don't have a bracket yet, so it is a 3/7 chance of playing any one of them right now)
-- 20 Big 12 games (unknown who is played once and who is played twice)
The 31 games from last season had a step chart of net ratings that looks like this...
The projection for next year looks like this here. Again, I used the projected net ratings from Torvik for 2025 (these projections might change slightly as portal season wraps up). I also estimated the number of games played against Maui opponents (3/7 per opponent) and against Big 12 opponents (20/15 per opponent). The prodigal Colorado has the distinction of being in both buckets (0.4286 + 1.3333 = 1.7619 games).
That is 37/21 according to my fraction calculator.
Overlay them and you have something that looks like this chart...
Some brief observations...
-- Houston "coming back down to Earth" and the expected number of games against them decreasing from two (the two last season) to 1.3333 knocks down the high end of the projections
-- this just reminds me who the Cyclones play twice in the Big 12 schedule is going to be crucial to determining conference SoS and the conference win total for the conference title race
-- definitely some improvement in the #5 through #11 range with more Big 12 games and replacing a few of the weaker games in Orlando with some tougher opponents in the Maui tournament
-- Mississippi Valley St. is projected to be really bad next year... worse than any of the Q4 cupcakes last season
-- the "meat" of the schedule... #6 on up in red and #9 on up in blue... definitely expands slightly, though the quality of the opponents in there otherwise look to be similar to last season
-- my "wish list" of swapping out two cupcakes for a permanent home/home with Creighton and/or a regional peer and a Big 12/Big Ten challenge would step this up even another level