The way it is structured right now, it's not about the conference records or even that much specifically about the overall records, it's about your RPI, BPI, and Tier 1, Tier 2 wins. Smart, beneficial scheduling helps. A strong conference helps because the committee doesn't seem to care about the losses as much as whether you picked up some good wins somewhere. Hence Nebraska going 13-5 in the conference but barely making the NIT because they had only one good win, while teams like Oklahoma and ASU piled up the losses in conference play but still got in thanks to some quality wins in their OOC. I am not sure how good the B1G will or won't be next season, but I know this, I hope the conference has a much better OOC showing than their abysmal OOC this past season. Because I don't know that OSU is going to be good or experienced enough to seize every opportunity and win most of the their tough OOC games, especially since our team will still be trying to come together as primarily a collection of sophomores and freshmen, so I feel like we're going to need more opportunities in conference play to pick up good wins than what most B1G teams had available to them this past season. Now, if it's still a weak-ish conference but you have two-plays with all of the teams that end up being the conference's Top 5, that should be enough opportunities for a bubble-type team to boost their resume and steal some valuable victories here and there, but who can say how that will shake out. And you still may need a quality win or two from your OOC if the conference is on the weak side.
Without experienced, high-level, constant, both-ends-of-the-court leaders like KBD and Tate, I just don't see OSU being able to achieve the same consistency that got them to 15-3 in the B1G this past season. I think we all had hope for KBD's potential, and maybe didn't expect a B1G PotY campaign but saw the possibility for him to be a huge factor for us. Thankfully he was and CJ improved a lot and Kaleb came in as a contributor in the post. Next season I am trying to look at the roster and be optimistic, but even if we can get one of the best grad transfers available, you aren't replacing the conference PotY and an All-American, and that's not even getting into everything Tate did for us or how big Kam was coming up for us early in conference play before his suspension and then in the Dance. I look forward to seeing development in our returning guys and seeing what the freshmen bring and hopefully we do get at least one really good grad transfer, but yeah, unless the B1G is down even more than it was this past season (which doesn't necessarily help us) I think our conference record is probably going to be more of the 10-8 or 11-7 variety, and that might be optimistic. So hopefully the B1G doesn't crap the bed as much early in the season and a 10-8 or 11-7 record implies some favorable resume numbers and wins.
