Then every ACC school would schedule very weak OOC schedules and win all of those games. Then you can artificially inflate the value of the conference's teams if even a team with 4 ACC wins is close to .500 The MWC, Big Ten and WCC all do this. Every year their teams seem as though theyre beating up on each other, and every year we find out the conference isn't as good as it seemed. The ACC for some reason went the opposite route, losing games they shouldn't and some they should, and then the entire conference season is spent thinking the whole conference is bad. And then NCAA Tournament comes around and the ACC performs better than almost every conference...rinse, repeat. I think this strategy is doubly (triply?) true for programs who are a system and need time to become the best versions of themselves. Michigan State has become a poster child for this, losing games to tough opponents early on, people write them off, then the Big Ten schedule buoys their SOR as they dismantle everyone when they finally become who they were supposed to be. VT can be that, but they need the perception of the conference changed first. It is also important for a team who has a ton of new players to play an easier schedule as they learn not only the expectations of the system, but many times of college basketball in general. So to answer a bit shorter... I think there's a lot of volatility in teams like VT early in the season. They could run the gauntlet and lose a couple, or they could lose to Jacksonville. But I don't think either would be a sure fire indicator of who they are/will be later in the season. I don't know what VTs schedule looks like from a date standpoint and that has a lot to do with it too...so who knows. Hopefully I can give a better answer around October when they start practicing and (hopefully) everyone is on campus and healthy