I follow SIU a little. They came into the year pretty hyped for FCS standards but lost their QB DJ Williams pretty early in their first game (loss to new FCS team West Florida). Their back-up looked pretty bad in that game and the next game against Samford (they were 27.5 point favorites and...
Hot take: Is this really that improbable in the NIL era? They have a top 30 (maybe higher) paid roster in the country and are being funded by a billionaire and their large alumni base. Cignetti is still a hell of a coach so props to him but I find George Mason or Loyola making the Final Four...
Wouldn't say it's that hard for a Big Ten schedule. 4 tough games, and they lost 3 of them. The rest of the way isn't very difficult. I guess the quality of 2 of those losses is top 2 teams in the country but they'll have far tougher Big Ten schedules in the future.