Highly doubt that the NCAA had their letter in between the Pitt game and Oakland game. We became the "championship" game for Oakland, Charlotte, USC, and Belmont after the big wins and top 8 ranking. This team could simply not handle it because 1. Their go to player is very inconsistent and gets disinterested too often 2. Williams is too immature to be a leader 3. Tobias is just a freshman so he really isn't a team leader in the locker room at this stage of the season and 4. Those teams saw how to attack us both offensively and defensively.
We have a lot of things that need improvement, and to point to speculation as being a reason why the players are not performing well is a pretty big reach. Problems like Scotty's bad dribbling, freshman not being assertive at times, Williams getting in foul trouble, and new players still finding an identity are problems that we have seen in the past or know could've happened. The looming punishment isn't a reason why Scotty dribbles off his leg, Pearl and McBee are not that good, etc...