NCAA Net Ranking- MID Majors screwed again

[apaladin]

Don’t know if you’ve seen this but the NCAA has dropped 3 of the 5 ratings they used to determine their Net rankings. The 3 they dropped, including winning percentage helped mid-majors. The 2 they kept pretty much assures no mid-majors has no chance of achieving a high net ranking. The only 2 they kept were “quality wins” and “strength of opponent”. In other words if you are not in a power conference forget it. This of course assures the big boys will keep all the at large bids.

[Roundball]

Don’t know if you’ve seen this but the NCAA has dropped 3 of the 5 ratings they used to determine their Net rankings. The 3 they dropped, including winning percentage helped mid-majors. The 2 they kept pretty much assures no mid-majors has no chance of achieving a high net ranking. The only 2 they kept were “quality wins” and “strength of opponent”. In other words if you are not in a power conference forget it. This of course assures the big boys will keep all the at large bids.

The NET rankings don’t mean anything. Never have. Never will.

[apaladin]

Really? It’s from the NCAA and is what they use for at large bids. The article plainly stated this.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... -selection

[Roundball]

Really? It’s from the NCAA and is what they use for at large bids. The article plainly stated this.

https://www.espn.com/mens-college-baske ... -selection

I don’t care what it says. It is what the committee does that tells the truth. They seldom mention the NET.

[soconjohn]

Roundball is right...I thought this actually meant something to start with, as the metric was created to benefit mid-majors...Then in 2019, the SoCon was the highest ranked conference in the old RPI system to not get more than one bid...It had never happened for a conference rated in the Top 13 in the country until 2018-19...I stopped giving a crap about the NET at that point.

[apaladin]

Now they wont have tu answer any questions. There will be no high ranked mid-majors to answer questions about or even consider It also is a big blow to mid-major NiT at large chances. This new system will just makr their jobs a lot easier. It also makes .500 teams from power conferences much more eligibke because they had 1-2 good wins and have a high NET ranking. You want see a FU or other mid major team as a 3 seed in the NIT again.

[Roundball]

Now they wont have tu answer any questions. There will be no high ranked mid-majors to answer questions about or even consider It also is a big blow to mid-major NiT at large chances. This new system will just makr their jobs a lot easier. It also makes .500 teams from power conferences much more eligibke because they had 1-2 good wins and have a high NET ranking. You want see a FU or other mid major team as a 3 seed in the NIT again.

There you go again with the glass half empty thinking. Win your SoCon games and beat a quality P5 team. Go the the Big Dance.

[apaladin]

Now they wont have tu answer any questions. There will be no high ranked mid-majors to answer questions about or even consider It also is a big blow to mid-major NiT at large chances. This new system will just makr their jobs a lot easier. It also makes .500 teams from power conferences much more eligibke because they had 1-2 good wins and have a high NET ranking. You want see a FU or other mid major team as a 3 seed in the NIT again.

There you go again with the glass half empty thinking. Win your SoCon games and beat a quality P5 team. Go the the Big Dance.

Well, I just enjoyed the last 2 years watching and following the Paladins high rankings, being ranked ahead of a lot power conference teams including CU and SC, and knowing the worst case scenario would be an at large bid to the NIT. Looks like that is out the window now and that is disappointing.

[youwouldno]

The NET rating system is in fact the main criterion for NCAA tournament selection. The committee has been very clear in stating that quality wins are the decisive factor, and the determination of win "quality" is the NET rating. Factoring in game location, "quadrant 1" wins are equivalent to a top-50 win, and "quadrant 2" wins are equivalent to a top-100 (but not top-50) win. Those are the wins that the committee looks for.

The purpose of the NET rating system was certainly not to help mid-majors. The goal was to have a more objective and frankly easier means of identifying "quality" wins, so that the committee would be more efficient at continuing the selection philosophy (favoring power conference teams) that was already in place.

The modifications to the NET rating make it align more closely with Pomeroy. Last year both NET and Pomeroy had 13 mid-majors in the top 100. In certain situations, one system might be better for a team than the other, but the new method is more sound statistically (it now is more of a pure, Pomeroy-style efficiency method).

The unfairness of the current system has nothing to do with the NET rating itself. It owes to basically 2 factors:

(1) There are no 'milestone'-type criteria for at-large selection to the tournament. Teams do not need a certain number of wins, and can even have a losing conference record, and still be selected. This is the main systematic bias in the selection process. This issue is somewhat complicated because it seems at least defensible on the surface (e.g., a really strong team could still go 9-11 in the Big 10), but the unfairness is that it actually causes the concentration of talent in the power conferences in the first place.

(2) There is no evidence that using "quality" wins is a better method of at-large selection than simply using the ratings. If the NET rating is good enough to determine who counts as a "quality" win, then by implication it should be good enough to simply determine which team is higher quality. The use of quality wins is an indefensible method of granting preference to power conference schools at the expense of mid-majors.

The main impact of the NET change will be a strong incentive to run up the score in victories . . . it will be interesting to see how coaches handle that.

[apaladin]

youwouldno, thanks for the analysis. On your last statement you said it will encourage teams to run up the score but the article did state that one of the things it won’t consider is margin of victory. The one thing that will hurt teams like FU is ignoring winning percentage. We all know the NCAA will only consider a “quality win” as being a victory over a power conference team and most mid-majors will only get a couple of chances.

[youwouldno]

youwouldno, thanks for the analysis. On your last statement you said it will encourage teams to run up the score but the article did state that one of the things it won’t consider is margin of victory. The one thing that will hurt teams like FU is ignoring winning percentage. We all know the NCAA will only consider a “quality win” as being a victory over a power conference team and most mid-majors will only get a couple of chances.

It's (deliberately) confusing. The most significant input for the old and new NET is "efficiency," basically how many points you score per possession, vs. how many you allow per possession, adjusted for the strength of the opponent. This is the basis for Pomeroy's ratings as well. I wasn't clear about this in my previous post.

Having a separate "margin of victory" input never made sense - presumably it was actually there for the sole purpose of being capped, as a slight disincentive to running up the score. But in reality, efficiency was the main thing, and running up the score improves efficiency.

With respect to winning %, it's true that helped mid-majors, but they also got rid of "adjusted winning %," which was adjusted based on strength of schedule, therefore favoring power conference teams. So getting rid of them both shouldn't substantially hurt mid-major teams (especially considering that a mid-major benefiting from a very high winning % would simply be punished by the committee for 'not playing a hard enough schedule').

[PaladinPower]

Here is a breakdown of a rough estimate of old vs new NET rankings with notable mid major teams. Looks like these teams/conferences will take a hit in next year’s rankings.

[Flagman]

If we take care of the things we can control, none of this will matter.

[apaladin]

If we take care of the things we can control, none of this will matter.

True but unfortunately that hasn't happened in 40 years so that is why the last 2 years have been so great with the high rankings and NIT bids etc. Seems like that has been taken away now.

[Furmanoid]

If we are who everybody here says we are, then winning our conference bid shouldn’t be too much to ask.