Let’s talk about the Sun Belt.
No, seriously, let’s talk about the Sun Belt. The league passed a rule on Wednesday that will fine any of its members for scheduling more than two Division II schools in a season.
What an idea! The Sun Belt wants its teams to avoid playing games that have no tangible benefit and replace those games with tougher tests that would ultimately improve the teams and perhaps put a few more butts in the seats. Will this catapult the league to new heights? Of course not. But it’s such a common sense move that we can only pray the American Athletic Conference does something similar.
The first two years of the AAC have shown that at least for now, it is two separate leagues existing as one. Up top, there are the contenders. That’s UConn, SMU, Cincinnati, Memphis, Tulsa and Temple. Then below that, there are teams that would be better suited for basketball in a low-major conference: Tulane, East Carolina, Houston, South Florida and Central Florida.
In order for the league to truly become a “power five plus one,” as commissioner Mike Aresco likes to call it, those bottom tier teams need to pick it up.
They already benefit from being in a conference with the top tier group. It will help their recruiting, the AAC TV deal helps their exposure and, naturally, UConn and Cincinnati draw better than UTEP and Southern Miss.
It is now time for the bottom tier to stop dragging the top tier down so far, and scheduling is a simple step in that direction.
As flawed as it might be, the RPI gives a good indication of how steep the divide is between the top and bottom of the AAC. The bottom tier of the AAC finished with an average RPI of 242 last year, while the top tier’s average was 51.
One way to start closing that gap? Playing better teams. Excluding early season tournaments, the bottom tier played a total of 25 non-conference games against either non-Division I teams or teams with RPIs of 300 and worse. That amounts to 43 percent of games they scheduled.
Compare that to only 12 percent of non-conference games for the top tier.
Now it should be noted that sometimes these games are inevitable, and that’s why teams should have some leeway, as they have in the Sun Belt. In the northeast, UConn rarely has to stress about filling its schedule — there are tons of Division I schools nearby. This is not true for Tulsa, which plays in the middle of nowh…uh…Oklahoma. If the Golden Hurricane need a couple crappy teams to fill their schedule, so be it. But that should not be the norm.
East Carolina, which plays in a state with 18 Division I programs, played the worst schedule of any AAC team last year. Out of 10 non-conference games (again, excluding tournaments with pre-determined opponents), the Pirates faced two Division III (yes, Division III) schools and four more sub-300 RPI teams.
This is what needs to stop. Cap it at one non-Division I school per season and two teams that finished 300 or worse in the RPI the previous year. It gives you some wiggle room for scheduling snafus and protects from a few schools making a mockery of the “power five plus one” concept.
This is being generous. I would argue that you should not be allowed to play any Division II or III schools. They’re meaningless games for both teams and provide nothing of value other than maybe a thousand paying customers who might show up. I’m just giving East Carolina the benefit of the doubt that maybe all 350 other Division I schools shot them down before it scheduled those D-IIIs.
If you’re wondering how UConn shakes out in this, the average RPI of the Huskies’ out of conference opponents was 141, dragged down by Central Connecticut (343) and Coppin State (311), their only sub-300 opponents.
The Huskies are already scheduled to face the Blue Devils next year, so let’s hope Coppin State can stay off the November slate. They don’t need to load the schedule with powerhouse programs, just ones that will provide more value than in intra-squad scrimmage.
