Harriet Miers was a non-Ivy Leaguer (law degree from Southern Methodist University) and IMO was still a crappy SCOTUS pick. Of course, on the flip side, David Souter was a state supreme court judge rather than a career federal judge.
But either way, you make a good point, it would have been a much better plan to expand the eligible pool of SCOTUS judges. It certainly wouldn't have hurt to look more at NON-Ivy League grads, instead of picking from a "list" where 95% of the judges graduated from either Yale or Harvard. I have no doubt there are plenty of well qualified judges in this country that didn't attend those schools.
Trump needed to think outside the box and not just elevate more Bush league elites to the highest court in the land, and IMO his failure to do so (which is moreso the failure of his advisors and the Federalist Society dopes making up these "lists") have come back to bite us in the butt, big time.
And IMO the biggest problem is the GOP base not being critical of those choices and immediately heaping praise and falling in line to rubber stamp ANY judge touted as a "originalist" to a LIFETIME job on the highest court in the land. Now those same FReepers are foaming at the mouth demanding that Congress "impeach" Gorsuch/Kavanaugh/Barrett, just as they did after Roberts turned out to be a disappointment.
Go back and look at any thread discussing Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Barrett at the time of their confirmation. It's an echo chamber ("God bless PDJT!! Go Gorsuch! Go Trump! MAGA!!!"), and anyone who had reservations about the pick was dismissed as a NeverTrumper who wanted to stop him from his big MAGA victory.
If they didn't blindly trust his worthless "list" and happily support ANY judge Trump picked, we wouldn't be in this mess right now.
Limiting oneself in ANY endeavor is moronic.
It’s even more pronounced when “limiting” choices on a matter like the SCOTUS.
Witness the mess we have now.