Auburn’s season started with a bang.
Right out of the gates, the Tigers tested themselves, hosting a Clemson team that’s in the preseason top 25, and that made the NCAA Tournament’s round of 32 last season.
It was an SEC-caliber challenge, against a program with the kind of brand power and athletics department resources that would fit right in with the SEC — and Auburn was up to the challenge, ultimately tying Clemson at 0-0.
But for the rest of the non-conference schedule, between now and the time real SEC play begins, Auburn’s schedule is lined with teams more at the mid-major level rather than the power-conference level.
Auburn followed that 0-0 tie with Clemson with a 5-0 blasting of Jacksonville State last Sunday in Auburn. Tonight, Auburn hosts Southern Illinois from the Missouri Valley Conference, and then there’s a slew of teams on the way from conferences like C-USA, ASUN and SoCon before SEC play starts.
Auburn would hope those games play out more like the Jacksonville State game than the Clemson game — and if they do, the coaches would have to shift gears in how they evaluate the team’s performances in those kind of games, compared to how they evaluated the game with Clemson.