My answer is “yes” and “no.”
But, oddly enough, I’m not being wishy-washy about it.
Not playing State might have done the trick alone.
Listening the the Selection Committee Chair’s answers to press questions yesterday leads me to believe this is a fact.
He several times referred to “conference realignment” and “unbalanced schedules” in saying how hard their work was.
One was in direct answer to a question about why Georgia Tech, ACC regular season champ, did NOT get a regional, while UNC, Florida State, and Clemson did.
It is widely known that Tech played a “soft” ACC schedule (didn’t play the top teams; played all the bottom teams.)
They were punished for that. Of course, it’s not Tech’s fault, they didn’t make out the schedule and can only play what the schedule, generated by the league office, says you must play. In the end, it was their misfortune to get the easy schedule they got.
By not playing either MO or SC we didn’t get some easy wins, but, in the end, those easy wins were seemingly held against Texas (3-0), Arkansas (6-0), and LSU (5-1).
The other side of things is we also did not play #1 Texas nor #3 (tied with us) LSU.
So…the actual “deciding” series might have been that we also didn’t play State, the league’s #11 team, but Texas did and went 3-0. Texas played all the bottom SEC teams except SC; we only played A&M.
So, the nex question is, who do we NOT want to play next year so that we can get the #1 seed again?
But, oddly enough, I’m not being wishy-washy about it.
Not playing State might have done the trick alone.
Listening the the Selection Committee Chair’s answers to press questions yesterday leads me to believe this is a fact.
He several times referred to “conference realignment” and “unbalanced schedules” in saying how hard their work was.
One was in direct answer to a question about why Georgia Tech, ACC regular season champ, did NOT get a regional, while UNC, Florida State, and Clemson did.
It is widely known that Tech played a “soft” ACC schedule (didn’t play the top teams; played all the bottom teams.)
They were punished for that. Of course, it’s not Tech’s fault, they didn’t make out the schedule and can only play what the schedule, generated by the league office, says you must play. In the end, it was their misfortune to get the easy schedule they got.
By not playing either MO or SC we didn’t get some easy wins, but, in the end, those easy wins were seemingly held against Texas (3-0), Arkansas (6-0), and LSU (5-1).
The other side of things is we also did not play #1 Texas nor #3 (tied with us) LSU.
So…the actual “deciding” series might have been that we also didn’t play State, the league’s #11 team, but Texas did and went 3-0. Texas played all the bottom SEC teams except SC; we only played A&M.
So, the nex question is, who do we NOT want to play next year so that we can get the #1 seed again?
