They also just absolutely murdered each other in conference play, culminating in an overly physical (and largely worthless) conference tourney in which teams like Illinois played three games in three days against tough teams.
Not exactly doing their teams any favors.
There is truth there, but look at Illinois for instance. The non-conference.
Their big win was against #10 Duke.
Well, turns out, Duke wasn't good.
They got beaten pretty easily by Baylor, lost to Missouri, and beat Ohio by 2. Their other 2 non-con games were against total nobodies.
So almost all of their resume is built on conference games. That's true of most of the teams, outside of Gonzaga.
But then you wonder why the Big Ten was given so much respect and a conference like the Pac-12, wasn't. It was all mostly just conference games.
So now I'm looking at this and I'm thinking a team like Oregon was probably way underseeded and Iowa is in trouble tomorrow.
EDIT: Just more on this: Michigan played absolutely nobody in the non-conference. Not one team they played made the tourney.
Iowa played a decent non-con schedule. Beat UNC (who did make the tourney) and got beaten rather badly by Gonzaga. I know the score ended up only 10 or 11, but I watched that game and they were down by 30 at one point.