There are a lot of changes in how the NCAA tournament selection committee will assess potential at-large teams this season, with a new emphasis placed on games played at neutral sites and away from home.
One thing hasn’t changed: If everything else is equal, the committee is going to lean toward teams that played tougher nonconference schedules. That would be bad news for N.C. State, which despite its trip to the Bahamas still played one of the weakest nonconference slates in the country, if there weren’t a bunch of other teams in the same boat.
But it’s still going to be the biggest hurdle the Wolfpack will have to clear to get into the field, a problem Kevin Keatts never thought he would have in Year 1 when he scheduled just looking for wins of any kind with a patchwork squad.