re: Rick Barnes says SEC teams should be fined if they don't play 3 top 50 games OOC

quote:

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As someone else stated, that ranking is a bit misleading.

This is not a notable OOC schedule for a power 5 team with NCAA tournament aspirations.

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That's fair, though evaluating our SOS over the past 4-5 seasons (in the spinoff thread) we still come in top 4 in the conference. If I eliminate this year's schedule from that all together we move from 93rd over that time span to 115th, which is still good for 6th best.

There are 2 methods of having a higher SOS. 1 is scheduling a ton of teams in the 50-150 range (eliminates the hit to SOS for 200+ RPI teams) *or* having sufficient 1-50 teams to offset some of the easier 150+ matchups. I agree that by and large, besides the Auburn loss, one of the main reasons why UGA was not really in consideration for the tourney was lack of quality (top 50 wins). Ultimately, I think more top 50 opponents would have only served to expose that this team was really bubble at best due to inconsistency and depth, but hopefully we'll be evaluating that with our schedule going forward.