people never seem to want to hear this for any conference because they get caught up in this idea that "wins in conference" somehow matter so much more as far as national rankings

but the reality what matters the most for any individual program and any conference is how you position yourself relative to other conferences and relative to getting ranked or as close to ranked as possible

and I think history shows (no matter how much people argue against it) that a conference and the programs in the conference do better when they play more games out of conference especially if the conference members as a whole can win a meaningful % above 50% of those games

nobody thinks a family of kids is the toughest kids on the block because every day they stand out in their front yard and beat each other up and then one of the wins and the others sit there beat up.....they think that family is tough because they walk up and down the block beating other families kids up even if they go home and beat up on each other some too

there is no reason The Sunbelt needs to get caught up in playing a ton of conference basketball games or worrying about how to make sure there is some tight conference affiliation that centers around "we play each other a lot in basketball"

the smart thing to do is schedule around ease of travel, established rivalries, and the like and then leave plenty of free OOC slots to go out and allow teams to play former conference mates, local rivals, or whatever else to try and develop THEIR program to the benefit of the conference overall