If we go 20-10(11-7) and finish top 4 in the SEC thus getting us a bye, it's possible the team we play in the 2nd round is actually not a RPI bottom feeder. Therefore a loss on a neutral court may not really hurt our RPI all that much, or be counted as a bad loss.
At 20-10 RPI is projected at 39, would take a pretty crappy team to make our RPI drop down in the 50s when playing on a neutral court.