But it’s even less fair than that for the Redbirds. Power-conference teams are also less likely to lose to bad teams, because the power-conference teams usually play those games at home. Most of their poor opponents are found in the nonconference schedule, where they have the economic leverage to schedule programs from lesser conferences. Indeed, of the eight games that Marquette played against teams outside the top 100, just one—Big East rival DePaul—was on the road. To make things even easier for Marquette, four of its “bad” opponents were really, really bad, falling in the bottom 100 of Division I basketball’s 351 teams. Those games are virtually automatic wins for any team with even remote tournament dreams.