Yes, those four teams have pretty laughable non-conference SOS. But we already know they would have that luxury to a certain extent because they play in the two strongest conferences. Of course you could argue that the whole reason that some of these teams are on the hosting bubble like us is precisely because their non-conference SOS is needlessly anemic. Lets take Maryland as an example:
non-conference SOS: #259 (easily the worst among top 25 teams)
Overall SOS: #53
They played 6 sub 200 teams OOC. Continuing my argument further, if they had bothered to play a remotely respectable OOC schedule they actually would not be on the bubble right now. They would be a high 4 seed to low 3 seed just by scheduling better.
Compare UNC to ACC peers in OOC SOS:
- dook #1 (1 team below 200, #229 specifically)
- NCSU #10 (2 teams below 200) (208 & 214)
- Louisville #48 (4 teams below 200) (317, 247, 362, 276)
- ND #49 (3 teams below 200) (346, 291, 362)
- UNC #80 (7 teams below 200, 3 of which were below 300)
All of these teams finished top 25 in the NET. Lets omit dook; their schedule was dumb and almost derailed their season. But I want ours to be NCSU on the high end to Louisville/ND on the low end. And of you look at the teams those three played, their ranked team matchups are pretty comparable to ours. (I would argue theirs were more winnable, but that is a different facet of he argument). The main difference was how many bottom feeders they played.