Part of the beauty of college basketball is that it isn't like college football. The top teams don't have to be afraid of playing a tough opponent; worried that risking a single loss would derail a season's worth of effort.
Instead, the best teams in college basketball want to cut their teeth on one another, learn from their shortcomings, shore up before spring, or build a resume for the NCAA committee by collecting wins against stiff competition.
The following is a list of the top five schedules in women's college basketball this season. These teams are going to do it the hard way. And you gotta admire that.
1) Tennessee. The Lady Vols never duck anyone (well, except maybe for that one team up north). The fact that they are coming off an unprecedented first-round loss in the NCAA Tournament doesn't change the degree of difficultly for Pat Summitt's program.
Tennessee routinely plays the most challenging schedule in the country and this year is no exception. The Lady Vols' non-conference schedule includes games against eight teams ranked in the first poll of the season, which was released Friday.
The Lady Vols' slate includes home games against Baylor, UCLA, George Washington, Texas, Louisville, Old Dominion and Oklahoma. The road schedule includes Virginia, Middle Tennessee and Stanford and a pair of big neutral-court games against Texas Tech and Rutgers.
At No. 8, Tennessee starts with its lowest ranking since 1985.
2.) Stanford. The second-ranked Cardinal have put together the best schedule in program history, one that includes games against five ranked teams and three conference champions. With many of the top teams in the Pac-10 rebuilding or reloading this year, Stanford will have to find out where it stands by going outside of the conference and, specifically, across the country.
Stanford will make two trips to the East Coast -- a season-opening journey to Old Dominion and Rutgers, followed by a Dec. 23 date against top-ranked Connecticut that will rank as one of the marquee regular-season matchups of the year.
Stanford's six-game home non-conference schedule includes Utah, Gonzaga, DePaul, Duke and Tennessee.
"We're playing such good competition that I don't know what will happen," Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer said. "There's a sense of urgency now, that if you don't have that schedule, I don't know that we could feel."
3.) Oklahoma. The 13th-ranked Sooners, who have been ranked in the AP Poll since the opening poll of the 2005-06 season, could play as many as nine of the teams ranked in the current preseason poll, and will face 10 others who received votes in the first poll.
Oklahoma's schedule includes tough road games against Georgia (Nov. 15), Tennessee (Jan. 3), and a matchup with Notre Dame in the Virgin Islands Tournament. The Sooners also face up-and-comer San Diego State, South Carolina, mid-major star Marist, and have home games against Baylor, Texas, Kansas and Connecticut.
4.) Rutgers. With the departures of Epiphanny Price and Kia Vaughn, the 25th-ranked Scarlet Knights are rebuilding, and just like last year, they will find out where they stand pretty quickly.
Rutgers' schedule includes eight ranked teams, four of them in the non-conference and four in the brutal Big East. The non-conference schedule includes home games against No. 2 Stanford, Boston College and Florida with a New York City date against Tennessee on Dec. 13.
Rutgers will go on the road to play Georgia and George Washington and will meet both Mississippi State and Texas in the Virgin Islands tournament on Thanksgiving weekend.
5.) Connecticut. The top-ranked Huskies don't always load up with non-conference opponents, but tough competition in the Big East always ups the RPI.
UConn's non-conference slate includes a neutral-court game against Texas in San Antonio, home games against Stanford and North Carolina -- the latter in the middle of the Big East schedule -- and road games against Florida State (Dec. 28) and Duke (Jan. 18).
If Connecticut blows through this schedule, a second straight national title could seem like a foregone conclusion come March.
