The schedules are out, the intrasquads are happening and we’re nearly ready for the 2020 season to begin. But with just under three weeks left until the season officially kicks off, we thought we’d find out which team will have the toughest road to April.
What’s that formula you ask? It’s pretty simple. Looking at 2019’s end-of-season rankings, we took each of the top 20 or so teams’ 2019 opponents’ rankings and added them all together. If their opponent was the home team, we subtracted two points for “home floor advantage.” In the case of non-neutral site meets with multiple teams, only the home team would have those points subtracted. Finally, we averaged that number and the team with the lowest number ranks first in schedule difficulty.
Confused? We broke down Oklahoma’s 2018 schedule as an example below.
In 2018 Oklahoma was at Georgia (12-2), hosted Iowa State (29) and Texas Woman’s (52), was at Florida (3-2), was at UCLA (4-2), hosted North Carolina (36), had a neutral meet versus Nebraska (7), hosted West Virginia (20), Michigan (10), Arizona State (41), Arkansas (19) and Denver (9), was at Alabama (6-2) and was at TWU (52-2). That means the Sooners competed against 14 total teams, coming out to an average of 20.71.
In 2018 and 2019 Florida had the most difficult schedule, according to our formula, and 2020 sees Alabama overtake the Gators with the toughest lineup by a long shot. The Crimson Tide face no opponent outside of the top 18, including defending national champions Oklahoma twice and three other nationals qualifiers (facing Georgia twice).
In a shocking twist, Arizona State comes in with the second-most difficult schedule, benefitting from competing six times against teams that made it to nationals, including Oklahoma, Denver and LSU twice. Florida rounds out the top three, only being held back in difficulty by its senior night meet against No. 55 Texas Woman’s.
Seven SEC teams ranked in the top 10, with only LSU missing out at 15th. Oklahoma (seventh) and Stanford (eighth) join ASU as the only non-SEC teams there. For a full ranking of the top 36 teams from the 2019 season, see the below chart.
| 2019 Rank | Team | Difficulty Score |
| 1 | Alabama | 8.667 |
| 2 | Arizona State | 14.933 |
| 3 | Florida | 15.909 |
| 4 | Arkansas | 16.538 |
| 5 | Auburn | 17.231 |
| 6 | Georgia | 18.063 |
| 7 | Oklahoma | 18.118 |
| 8 | Stanford | 18.188 |
| 9 | Kentucky | 18.538 |
| 10 | Missouri | 19.250 |
| 11 | UCLA | 19.500 |
| 12 | Utah | 21.083 |
| 13 | Minnesota | 21.846 |
| 14 | Denver | 23.053 |
| 15 | LSU | 23.235 |
| 16 | Nebraska | 23.308 |
| 17 | Arizona | 23.467 |
| 18 | BYU | 24.417 |
| 19 | Washington | 25.429 |
| 20 | Southern Utah | 25.857 |
| 21 | Ohio State | 25.933 |
| 22 | Penn State | 26.111 |
| 23 | Iowa State | 26.938 |
| 24 | California | 28.350 |
| 25 | Michigan | 28.429 |
| 26 | Iowa | 28.526 |
| 27 | Illinois | 28.765 |
| 28 | Oregon State | 29.929 |
| 29 | Central Michigan | 34.167 |
| 30 | Boise State | 34.385 |
| 31 | New Hampshire | 37.048 |
| 32 | Maryland | 37.586 |
| 33 | West Virginia | 37.850 |
| 34 | N.C. State | 40.500 |
| 35 | George Washington | 43.310 |
| 36 | Lindenwood | 43.750 |
Article by Elizabeth Grimsley, extra assistance from Tara Graeve
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