Bruce Pearl sat on the patio of the clubhouse overlooking the course at Grand National back in mid-September, a month and a half before the season started, and joked that one of his most trusted assistants “might need to be looking for work after this season.”

He was referring to Mike Burgomaster, the Tigers’ recruiting coordinator and assistant to the head coach who Pearl also refers to as his “scheduling guru.” Burgomaster, in his seventh year at Auburn, is responsible for putting together the team’s slate of games. Even before the season got underway, Pearl knew Burgomaster did a good job of scheduling for the Tigers — maybe too good of a job.

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“We’ve got a real challenging schedule, and a lot of pieces to fit in,” Pearl said that day. “But I mean, obviously, it’s going to get us prepared and, you know, get us ready.”

Auburn’s nonconference slate was intended to help prepare it for a grueling SEC schedule, but as the Tigers head into the NCAA Tournament this week in Birmingham, it’s clear Burgomaster’s scheduling machinations also played a considerable role in Auburn punching its ticket to the Big Dance this year.

The Tigers (20-12) earned a No. 9 seed in the Midwest Region and will face Iowa (19-13) in the opening round Thursday at 5:50 p.m. in Legacy Arena. Despite going just 4-9 in their final 13 games, Auburn was safely in the field — moving off the bubble in part thanks to a late-season win against NET No. 4 Tennessee, but also securing a bid on the strength of one of the toughest schedules in the country this season.

Auburn’s 2022-23 strength of schedule was 18th overall, according to the NCAA’s NET rankings. Auburn played 17 games against teams that made the field of 68 this season, which is tied for the fourth-most in the country (Iowa State, TCU, Arkansas and West Virginia also played 17 games against tournament teams). Only Kansas, Texas and Baylor played more games against tournament opponents this year.

For Auburn, those 17 games came against a school-record 13 different tournament teams, including six during nonconference play. The previous school record for NCAA Tournament teams faced was 10 during the 2020-21 season.

Auburn went just 7-10 in those games against tournament teams, including 3-3 in nonconference action. Pearl’s team got out-of-conference wins against Colgate, Northwestern and Texas Southern but also lost games at USC, against Memphis and at West Virginia. Two of those losses were by three points each.

Colgate won the Patriot League and earned the 15-seed in the Midwest Region. Northwestern finished tied for second in the Big Ten and drew a No. 7 seed in the West Region. Texas Southern won the SWAC and will play Fairleigh Dickinson as a pair of 16-seeds in the play-in round. USC finished third in the Pac-12 and got the 10-seed in the East Region, where AAC tournament champion Memphis got the eight-seed. West Virginia drew a nine-seed in the South Region. The six nonconference games against tournament teams was also a new Auburn record.

“We have always tried to play a tough schedule,” Pearl said. “Look, nobody wants to play your Texas Southerns and your Colgates, because they’re good enough to beat you. And many of the other teams we played…. So, while it’s kind of easy to criticize this team for losing as many games as we lost, one of the other things that was a big factor was we were 19-3 against teams we were favored against. And that means, you know, I can only ask the kids to do what they’re capable of doing, and then can they reach up and raise the bar a little bit? I think we demonstrated we could — not often enough to be able to compete for the regular-season championship. So, we’re prepared.”

For as much quality as Auburn’s nonconference slate featured (79th in NET strength of schedule), it was the Tigers’ conference schedule that carried the most heft. Eight SEC teams made the NCAA Tournament this season: Auburn, top overall seed Alabama, seventh-seeded Missouri, fourth-seeded Tennessee, sixth-seeded Kentucky, eighth-seeded Arkansas, seventh-seeded Texas A&M and 11th-seeded Mississippi State. Auburn went 4-7 against those teams this season, with four of those losses decided by five points or fewer.

“Making it competitive, being a competitive conference allows you to have a little more experience in close games,” Auburn center Johni Broome said. “Then we played teams like Northwestern who’s pretty good, Memphis is pretty good, teams like that. I just think it prepares us for the close games and the hard matchups. We’ve played physical teams, we’ve played athletic teams, we’ve played teams that could shoot it from three. We’ve got a feel for everybody so I feel like we’ve just got to put it together now.”

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Despite Auburn’s 7-10 record against the field, those narrow losses — six of them, in all — didn’t weigh down the Tigers’ overall resume, which included a 17-2 record outside of Quad 1 games. It’s a major reason why Auburn was able to avoid the bubble and breathe easy on Selection Sunday.

Now the Tigers are hoping that daunting schedule over the last four months, and how they played against those quality opponents, bodes well for their chances of making another March run.

“I think it prepares us well, just knowing that we played a lot of teams that are in the tournament field,” senior wing Allen Flanigan said. “Just being there, being able to already have seen and played against some of the competition and just knowing that they’re the best—the top teams in their league—it gives us hope going into the tournament that we can stick around and win some games.”

Tom Green is an Auburn beat reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter @Tomas_Verde.