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84 ILLUSTRATED VOLUME 25, ISSUE 3 f ule may have been what ultimately doomed it. The NCAA volleyball committee's emphasis on RPI makes non-conference strength of schedule important. Purdue's took a major hit when its three opponents in the Kennesaw State Owls Invitational — UNC-Ashe- ville, Kennesaw State and Elon — finished with RPIs of 279, 248 and 282, respectively. Morehead State and Notre Dame were expected to provide strong non-conference competition coming off NCAA Tournament appearances but finished a combined 9-51 in 2014. "All year long, we kept seeing the teams we played get beat over and over and over again in non-conference," Shondell said. "Combine the (Kennesaw State weekend) with some other schools who weren't playing nearly as well as they had been, and we were fighting an uphill bat- tle with RPI." Purdue didn't strengthen its case on the road, limping to a 5-7 mark with six consecutive losses away from West Lafayette to end the season. Purdue's best road win came against 16-15 Northwestern, which finished with an RPI of 81. "I think at the end of the day that's what I'll look back on and say we didn't do a very good job of — preparing and playing on the road," Shondell said. "We had some players who were really good at home, but you get them on the road and they weren't as efficient." Purdue's margin for error slimmed because it had few- er opportunities to defeat high RPI teams in conference play. Purdue played conference cellar-dwellers Maryland and Rutgers, newcomers to the league, a combined four times and didn't get to play Illinois and Nebraska at home, teams that finished with RPIs of 8 and 13, respectively. "We really didn't play that many teams that would have been considered big upsets," Shondell said. "Penn State and Wisconsin were going to be hard to beat with our young team no matter where we played them. I think Nebraska and Illinois could have been opportunities to win had we gotten them at home." Charles Jischke Purdue's seniors, like setter Val Nichol, had to try to bring along a young group, but the Boilermakers limped down the home stretch, particularly on the road.