i could be wrong but i don't think most people look at the strength of schedule thing in a way that i think is most important. at this point in the season, the biggest issue w/ SoS is the cumulative effect (or lack thereof) that playing shitty teams all season has on a team, not the singular event of playing a shitty team on a random tuesday night. the opposite is true of those teams playing in tougher conferences. i know it's obvious but i'm not sure people really consider it a whole lot when having these discussions.
this is exactly why I discount WSU. It's not that they played Southern Illinois (226)...it's that they then played @ Evansville (226) and then @ Loyola (279)...up next is Drake (181) then a roadie at Bradley (248).
sure, Syracuse lost to BC (166) but that was after playing Duke (8), ND (108), Clemson (68), @ Pitt (31), NC St (63)...and then after playing BC, they have to @ Duke (8), @ Maryland (74), @ Virginia (14).
IMO, a team from the Big 12, Big 10, Pac-12, ACC, and possibly Florida deserve a #1 seed over WSU.