For those who may still be wondering why there's been a fuss over playing the Hospital schools (Detroit Mercy, Houston Baptist) and The Citadel, here's why:

Houston Baptist is 1-16. They are the 340th ranked RPI team out of 351 teams. That's dreadful. Our RPI suffers because of it. If VT were to have replaced them with someone like Tennessee Tech, they'd replace a 1-16 team with an 11-8 team. That one replacement would result in an RPI bumped up to around .5654 from .5517. That's RPI Rank 82 to around 68-70.

Replace both The Citadel and Houston Baptist with say, Tenn Tech and Elon (10-9), you end up with an RPI of .5743 (or so, Other Opponents Win Percentage would vary) and an RPI Rank of 56-59.

That's the difference in two opponents. Once the season ends, those two opponents could be the difference between an RPI of 65 and 45, i.e. getting into or not getting into the tournament.

That's the gripe with the schedule, and I understand VT is not a program that can just grab whomever they want. BUT, as a P5 school, VT should be getting better than the bottom of the barrel teams. 4 +300 RPI teams is unacceptable.