How tough is your team's spring schedule?

Continuing my kick with looking at the spring college tournament schedule and identifying events with the most ranked teams in their fields, it got me curious which men's and women's teams would be facing the most ranked teams during the spring season. Such data would provide a decent metric regarding which schools were going to be playing the toughest schedules in the coming months.

Like I did to identify the toughest tournaments, I went through the spring schedule for every team that received a vote in the final fall edition of Golf World's men's and women's polls. For all schools I calculated how many top-10 teams they will be facing in their tournaments in the spring, how many top-25 opponents they will encounter and how many schools they will compete against that received at least one vote in the final fall poll.

Below is what I uncovered. Schools are listed in the order based on who will be facing the most schools that received a vote. I broke down my charts by top 25 teams and by all teams receiving votes.

The results? On the men's side, the two schools in Los Angeles (UCLA and USC) will face the stiffest competition among ranked programs. Both will compete against 14 top-10 teams, more than 40 top-25 teams and more than 60 schools that received votes in the men's poll. Meanwhile, after having a rough fall season in which they finished in the top five in only two of four events and had a head-to-head record of 16-29, Arizona State will find getting back over the .500 mark to be a challenge considering they have the "toughest" spring schedule of any non-ranked team in the country.

As for the women, there is more bunching regarding what schools will have the bumpiest roads this spring. North Carolina, Duke, Virginia and Alabama all will see teams receiving votes in the Golf World/NGCA coaches' poll 51 times this spring, with the Tar Heels seeing the most top-10 opponents (19). Meanwhile, four other schools, LSU, Auburn, TCU and Purdue, all will compete against 50 schools that received votes.

MEN

*Top 25 teams

*[#image: /photos/55ad72f2b01eefe207f698e4]|||Men top 25 team sched strength.jpg|||

All schools receiving votes