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

A SEC-Big East challenge would be good for the league. I don't see the ACC-Big 10 challenge ending, but the Big East has good teams that would boost our league.

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Teams like Auburn can't convince good teams to do Home/Home with us . Also, I don't want to be stuck playing OM/MSU/Arky all the time

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Pearl has gotten some good ones the last few years : Xavier, Colorado. He'll get some more. Scheduling won't be a problem at Auburn, Pearl loves big games.

Totally agree about East-West games.

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Teams like Auburn can't convince good teams to do Home/Home with us . Also, I don't want to be stuck playing OM/MSU/Arky all the time

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Of course you can't. Y'all can't even beat the cupcakes you're being criticized for scheduling. Walk before you run.

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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.

I mean, it's a pretty deep schedule

Power-5 teams
@ Seton Hall (#19)
vs K-State (#91)
vs Georgia Tech (#69)
vs Clemson (#129)
@ Baylor (#26)

Consistently Good Mid-Majors
vs Chattanooga (#52)
vs Murray State (#170)
vs Oakland (#116)
vs Winthrop (#131)

And on top of that High Point (#153) was pretty good this year.

The only bad team UGA played was Robert Morris.

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vs. Armstrong State
vs. Chattanooga
vs. Murray State
vs. High Point
at Seton Hall
vs. Oakland
vs. Kansas State
vs. Winthrop
vs. Georgia Tech
vs. Clemson
vs. Robert Morris
at Baylor

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Frankly I think UGA's OOC is perfectly fine if they swap 2 of the exhibition type opponents with regular cupcakes.

I agree with Barnes. If the SEC wants to be competitive from top to bottom, they'll certainly need to address it with scheduling some tougher OOC games.