I have to imagine scheduling for mid-majors like ourselves and other A10 teams has become more difficult with the transfer portal. As mentioned earlier - in the past, you would ideally schedule harder when you knew you were going to have a strong team. But that is harder now than ever given the portal and we are no different - look at our team last year that won the A10 regular season, and now we have a lot of new faces. Hard to predict what you will have year to year.
This also makes it harder for MTE's to invite you as they can't predict either and must rely on your program history. They are likely more willing to trust teams like a Dayton and VCU - who have been consistently good the past several years, to a team like UR - who has the potential to be good, but can also produce back to back losing seasons. So that has likely hurt us.
This makes the not MTE scheduling that more important - because until we turn in a consistent 4-6 year run where we are winning 20+ games a year and have a notable win or two each year, these higher level MTE's probably won't call us.