Auburn coach Tony Barbee is all for the abolition of divisions in men’s basketball set forth during the SEC’s spring meetings in Destin, Fla., at the end of May.

But he’s still trying to wrap his mind around what form a proposed expanded conference schedule would take.

“In terms of adding more games, it’s something that we’re going to study as a league to really determine what the benefit is of keeping it at 16 games, going to 18 or possibly 22,” Barbee said during the SEC summer teleconference Tuesday. “I really don’t have a thought on that yet because I really haven’t looked at it yet and studied the benefit of it.

“But I do know, if it’s going to be 18 games, adding two more games against teams in this league can probably do nothing but benefit because of the strength of the basketball programs in this conference.”

Barbee said the main goal with the league’s proposed changes is to place more teams in the NCAA Tournament.

The SEC had five teams — Florida, Kentucky, Vanderbilt, Tennessee and Georgia — make the tournament last year, with all of them coming from the East.

Alabama, which won the SEC West with a 12-4 conference record and was 21-11 overall after the SEC Tournament, had its bubble burst before finishing runner-up in the NIT.

The hope for the future, Barbee said, is that a team like Alabama won’t be dragged down by a division having a down season — as the West was last year — now that “East” and “West” are no more in SEC basketball.

“I think (there’s a) perception issue in this league that we’ve almost had two separate leagues and that hasn’t benefited the league as a whole,” Barbee said. “So I think now that we’re going to one we’re going to be one league it’s going to benefit us in terms of perception.

“I’ve said this, ‘There’s no way that an Alabama team that if we were … one league, one conference last year that would have finished second in the standings behind Florida with their record, I’m still not convinced they would not have been in the NCAA Tournament coming in second place in the SEC if you would have looked at it in that format.”

Barbee said he envisions a scheduling format like the Big 12 employs, where former division rivals will play each other as frequently as in the past, but without the divisional distinctions.

And he doesn’t feel like the decreased non-conference scheduling flexibility that comes with an increase in the number of conference games is a detriment.

Strength of schedule doesn’t hold much importance to Auburn if it keeps going through seasons like its 11-20 campaign last year.

But Barbee said he hopes it’ll start to matter soon.

“At the end of the day here at Auburn we’re going to try to build a national program, and the only way I think you do that is building a national schedule,” Barbee said. “But at the same time I’ve got to be smart about it in terms of where we are in the genesis of the program.”