Bruce Pearl has plenty of reasons for scheduling what is by far Auburn's most challenging non-conference schedule in program history. The Tigers face a gauntlet of Houston, Iowa State, Duke, Ohio State and Purdue, along with the possibility of either Dayton or North Carolina in the second game of the Maui Invitational. If they advance far enough, two-time defending national champion UConn is likely waiting for Pearl's squad.
But the Auburn coach isn't doing this just for giggles. He knows how important these games are for his program and its fans. It also has to do with what happened a year ago when the Tigers' non-conference schedule didn't work out as it was supposed to.
"Last year, when we put USC, Notre Dame, Indiana on the schedule, we did so following great years by all those programs," Pearl said. "We anticipated their being great again. They just weren't. If it wasn't for our record, the margin of our victory -- and the analytics -- we weren't going to have enough Quad 1 wins to be really be better than a 5-seed."
There's little chance that teams such as the Cougars, Cyclones, Blue Devils and Boilermakers have an off-year, helping Auburn's strength of schedule and RPI and the opportunity for significant non-conference victories. The Tigers return a veteran team with 10 seniors predicted to make a deep run in March. Some of these players could have left for other opportunities instead of returning to Auburn. As their reward, they get to play in electric atmospheres while facing some of the elite in college basketball.
And, as always with Pearl, he has the Auburn faithful in mind as well. Last season, 8,000 or so Hoosier fans showed up at State Farm Arena thinking they could turn it into a home-court advantage. Instead, Auburn fans switched it up on them as the Tigers pulled away for a 104-76 victory.
"I just want to give these guys an opportunity," the coach said. "I want to give these guys that chance. And I want to give our fans the opportunity to go down there and go to Houston and support us against Houston knowing that they're going to be one or two, three in the country, on the road. We continue to try to bring in great teams to Atlanta and at Hoopsgiving."
Most of all, Pearl says Auburn needs to start acting like a top-10 team. As he mentioned during his press conference on Wednesday, the Tigers have been in the top 10 at one point during six of the last seven seasons. Scheduling these top teams is something he can control and a challenge he wants his team to step up to.
"We're just trying to act like we belong," Pearl said.
