First off, I heartily agree that scheduling can play a huge role in how successful your program is. The men's basketball team is a good example -- last year, they started off 0-5, with four of those games on the road. But then they got a break, with five out of six games at home, all against lower division or less talented D-1 teams. They won those five (sandwiched around a loss at BYU), then road that momentum to an upset of Weber State on the road, and a decent season. In most years past, ISU would play a lower division team at home, disappear for two or three weeks to play "money games," come home and beat another lower division team or two, then disappear again until conference season. Typically they'd start league play with a 2-9 or 3-8 record, and it was all downhill from there.
Alas, ISU rarely gets the opportunity to play a schedule like last season's. Like most Big Sky teams, ISU has a difficult time convincing other D-1 programs to play them at home. And the "money games" are absolute necessities. Here's an interesting fact from ISU's last submission to the State Board, covering the year ended June 30, 2017. That fiscal year, ISU generated total revenue from tickets sales of ALL sports of $245,581. If you divided that number by 48, the number of home games played that year by the football, men's and women's basketball teams, soccer and volleyball (the teams that charge admission), you get an average "gate" of just over $5,100 for all ISU home games. I doubt seriously that ISU can pay the ushers, officials, and table crew, and turn on the lights and the popcorn machine for $5,100. (The Bengal men generated $425,000 in "money games" in 2016-17, the women $58,000.)
Every Big Sky team plays "money games," some more than others. Montana, considered one of the top two programs in the league year after year, played at Pitt, Penn State, Stanford, UCLA, and Washington, among others, last year. Northern Arizona, the worst team in the league the last couple of seasons, played a total of three non-conference home games last year -- two against non-Division I schools. It would be great if ISU could balance those "money games" with a nice stretch of home games every year like they did last season. But the vagaries of scheduling and having to play when you can get the "money games" often dictate otherwise.