We're not like a lot of other schools who have played a couple of big teams to boost their ratings and a bunch of crap-cake duds. We just have a lot of average wins against a lot of average schools. A lot of those teams will probably end up at or above 0.500 (except for maybe St. John's and DePaul, due to being in a brutal Big East). I would agree that we didn't play a murderer's row, but it's not like we were playing the Little Sisters of the Poor, Deaf, and Blind every week like a lot of people think.
And it's not like other teams aren't doing this. Louisville's schedule is 229; Maryland's, 232; SMU's, 225 (all according to KenPom). Pittsburgh's schedule is ranked 312, and they're being talked up as an ACC dark horse. We're only getting flack for it because we weren't expected to be any good. Change our name to "Arizona" (presently 224th in strength of schedule), and all criticism would disappear.
My point isn't that we're as good as those teams or have played a schedule as tough as those teams, but that having a low SOS at this point is pretty normal for a lot of really good teams. Take a glance at the Top 100 schedules on KenPom and you'll see a scattering of major-conference teams (mostly in the lower reaches) and a butt-ton of small conference and mid-major schools. Those include, incidentally, Western (#5), Norfolk St. (#19), Oral Roberts (#22), Drexel (#60), DePaul (#64), Tulsa (#70), and Lipscomb (#92). We've played a lot of teams that are better than their records because they were scheduled as sacrificial lambs for stronger teams.