Depends on conference schedule and your place in it....play stronger finish 500 out of conference and run over the conference then you are still good, coming out of the elite conferences.
Which isn't a thing anyone can know when the schedules are made, especially now - hell, we still don't really know what our roster looks like right now in mid-June. Yeah, if we're gonna go 10-8 in conference then sure, try to rack up wins and game a tournament berth. We don't know whether that will happen when the schedules are made though.
In general, unless your team is really young and/or inexperienced, I think we should err on the side of scheduling good non-conference teams.