Pitt is #62 at 15-7, 8-3 with 3-2 in Q1, 4-4 in Q2. I Examined some above them such as Oregon, VaTech, etc, etc. Doesn't make sense to me. If any of you know why Pitt isn't higher with their credentials, please reply.
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Please explain NET rankings
- Thread starter GT74
- Start date
Not even coaches and administrators know how the NET is formulated, but for those who need the basic info this is a decent reader’s digest version.
sports.betmgm.com
What Are NET Rankings in College Basketball? NET Rankings Explained
NET Rankings are a ranking metric used to evaluate college basketball teams for the 2023 NCAA Tournament. Read more about them.
sports.betmgm.com
NET is basically now a 2-component formula comprised of "Team Value Index" and "adjusted net efficiency." The description from the NCAA of these I copied and pasted below:
"With the changes announced in May 2020, the NET will no longer use winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin. The remaining factors include the Team Value Index (TVI), which is a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home, as well as an adjusted net efficiency rating. The adjusted efficiency is a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played. For example, a given efficiency value (net points per 100 possessions) against stronger opposition rates higher than the same efficiency against lesser opponents and having a certain efficiency on the road rates higher than the same efficiency at home."
www.ncaa.com
"With the changes announced in May 2020, the NET will no longer use winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin. The remaining factors include the Team Value Index (TVI), which is a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home, as well as an adjusted net efficiency rating. The adjusted efficiency is a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played. For example, a given efficiency value (net points per 100 possessions) against stronger opposition rates higher than the same efficiency against lesser opponents and having a certain efficiency on the road rates higher than the same efficiency at home."
College basketball's NET rankings, explained
Here's everything you need to know about college basketball's NET ranking system.
www.ncaa.com
As others have said, the NCAA has purposely not released the formula (probably to prevent coaches gaming it). The good news is that our NET rank doesn't matter so dont worry about it. My best guess on what I've read is that NET makes a better effort to rank teams based on how good they are, not necessarily your resume. So more of a Vegas-ish predictive model. And to be honest, we really aren't that good of a team. We are winning with hard work, perseverence, toughness, big plays, timely shots, etc.
The secrets are kept in a Big 10 vault in the Big 10 headquarters.
The top quarter of Pitt's OOC schedule was very competitive. The problem is that the other 75% was close to bottom of the barrel. They needed that 25% tough, 50% average and 25% weak mix.
Their OOC is basically all <100 NET opponents and then all >250 NET opponents. No middle. And it's pretty dumb because there probably isn't much of a challenge difference between beating the #140 team at home versus the #240, but it kills your NET.
Their OOC is basically all <100 NET opponents and then all >250 NET opponents. No middle. And it's pretty dumb because there probably isn't much of a challenge difference between beating the #140 team at home versus the #240, but it kills your NET.
Yeah somehow they need to find less crappy teams for the nonconference.. Not power 6 and tough teams but teams that won’t crush your nonconference sos. More teams from like 100 to 200. Probably a lot easier said than done!
Didn’t Pitt play Northwestern, Michigan and VCU in non-conference? Those are all competitive teams. In fact, NW was 15-5 at last look.
That's what I was saying, 25% of their OOC schedule was pretty good. The four you mentioned, plus @ Vandy. Literally the rest of the games were against NET dregs. I think UTM was the next highest around 240.
Yes, the problem is everyone else, as fireball mentioned. Look at this easy graphic reference to see how bad all the other OOC games were:
They do have two additional ACC games in lieu of OOC. If you count @ncstate and @cuse as pre New Years OOC then not as bad.
It's kind of ridiculous to not take losses into greater account for the rankings, it seems that a much higher value is placed on Adjusted Efficiency Index rather than the WIn/Loss Team Value Index. That's how you get these two drastically different NET rankings that are basically a 1 game difference in record. Granted Team B in general loses games by a wider margin than Team A. Team A should be higher ranked, but 70 spots and a top 30 team?
Team A. 11-10 NET #29.
Q1 - 2-8
Q2 - 3-1
Q3 - 0-0
Q4 - 6-1
Road - 1-6
Conference - 3-7
0-1 vs Team B
SOS (Kenpom, MGM, TR) - 16, 9, 10
Team B. 10-12 NET #99.
Q1 - 2-9
Q2 - 1-3
Q3 - 1-0
Q4 - 6-0
Road - 2-7
Conference - 3-8
1-0 vs Team A
SOS (Kenpom, MGM, TR) - 2, 2, 34
.edited for nonsensical sentence.
Team A. 11-10 NET #29.
Q1 - 2-8
Q2 - 3-1
Q3 - 0-0
Q4 - 6-1
Road - 1-6
Conference - 3-7
0-1 vs Team B
SOS (Kenpom, MGM, TR) - 16, 9, 10
Team B. 10-12 NET #99.
Q1 - 2-9
Q2 - 1-3
Q3 - 1-0
Q4 - 6-0
Road - 2-7
Conference - 3-8
1-0 vs Team A
SOS (Kenpom, MGM, TR) - 2, 2, 34
.edited for nonsensical sentence.
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I tried arguing this exact point like a month ago and was shredded.. it was about Dixon's OOC vs. ours.. ours being really difficult because of the high end guys we played... but if you look at overall OOC, our schedule isn't as "good" because of the garbage teams we've played... you made my exact point... what's the difference between 140 and 240? probably not much at all.. but it's a lot when you're ranking them.
Kent State is ranked above us with 0 Quad 1 or Quad 2 wins and an overall record of 15-4 in the MAC.
Florida is 12 spots ahead and 1-7 in Quad 1 and 1-2 in Quad 2. Overall record of 12-9.
Make it make sense.
Florida is 12 spots ahead and 1-7 in Quad 1 and 1-2 in Quad 2. Overall record of 12-9.
Make it make sense.
Again you are completely wrong. NET rankings DO matter and are the primary tool by the NCAA to determine the field.https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketbal...05/college-basketballs-net-rankings-explained
How are the NET rankings used?
Since the NET rankings serve as the primary sorting tool for Division I men's basketball, they play an important role in establishing a team's resume.See my other post and find the other article I linked. Your own NET is Tier 3 criteria.
Oh yeah, let me sort through all of the bookmarks I've made of your enlightened posts.
But the NET ranking system determines a whole lot more than just your own ranking. It determines the quality of your wins/losses, your perceived strength of schedule, etc.
That's why beating Ohio State at home is considered a Q1 win, even though they've lost 6 out of their 7 away games. It's also why a road win vs 9-12 Ole Miss is a Q2 win, even though they're only 6-6 at home, are a combined 1-10 in Q1 and Q2, and have lost 9 of their last 10 games.
At the end of the day the voters are given leeway to base their own decisions for their at-large bids and having an authoritative index say that Team A is #53 and Team B is #87 is likely to influence perceptions. So it's a lot more than a "Tier 3 criteria."
I believe so. It uses predictive features so not necessarily running up the score but if Team A and Team B have the same record and same schedule and Team A wins all their games by 20 and Team B wins all their games by 1, Team A would be viewed as the better team. Whereas RPI would have them the same.
Also, I think Pitt's defensive efficiency (110) plays a large role in their NET rank. How bout Jamie at 11 though? BK at 3. Cronin at 6. Lots of old Big East there.
The NET ratings this year are by far the worst and most inconsistent I have ever seen them. The old RPI was far superior to the numbers this year. Virginia Tech higher than others who are more deserving in the ACC is a perfect example why the NET should be scrapped and not be given any credability.
The Net is some type of efficiency metric site. Look how close the teams are that are in there in comparison to Torvik or Pomeroy rankings. They are similar. Notice how when we beat North Carolina and Virginia at home, we didn't move a lot on either of the efficiency sites or on NET. The same thing just happened when we beat Wake Forest and Miami. We barely moved a lot on all 3 sites, all 3 of which are efficiency sites.
An average Ohio State team that is barely over .500 in record is top 30 on all 3 sites. 3 efficiency sites. Ohio State is 90th in the RPI and 3rd from last place in the Big Ten. Anyone with a pair of eyes know they aren't close to being a top 30 team right now.
The NET obviously uses scoring margin, just like the efficiency sites of Torvik and Pomeroy. None of these sites are taking into consideration injuries. None of these sites are taking into consideration how a team started vs how a team finished the season.
I would have to do a deeper dive on this to see the bubble teams that missed in the previous years when the NET came out and look at their numbers and figure out why they didnt make the tournament. I know in the last few years there has been tweaks to the NET. I would also have to look into it to see if the rpi was even looked at to seed place teams or not. But again, the NET is an efficiency site, just like Pomeroy and Torvik, its quite obvious when you look at it.
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It's funny how college football forbid the BCS computers from using margin of victory to discourage running up the score but de facto efficiency ratings in NET encourage it?
NET doesn’t take scoring margin into account - at least not directly. But if you’re playing really efficiently on offense and defense, you’re probably going to win that game by a huge margin.
It "claims" that it doesn't. The federal government claims a lot of things too which they lie / pretend about.
I would have believed this until I looked and saw how similar the teams are ranked by the 3 different efficiency sites and how close the rankings actually are to each other. Its obvious they do.
The NET just gets more leeway. And why not, you can completely change a teams seed line by moving a team from 29 to 31 and vice versa without explaining to anyone why it is ranked the way it is and change teams Q1 wins and Q2 wins by the way they want them to be.
To me, the NET is a useful efficiency metric system but also a BS metric system. If anything, take the NET and the RPI and average them out. The NET by itself has poor credibility the way it is.
It kinda uses it in a round-a-bout way through its efficiency ratings. If you are playing Team B and Team B averages 70 pts and gives up 65 pts, but you beat them 70-65 then you are going to have above average efficiency in both offense and defense. Obviously if you beat them 75-65 then you offensive efficiency is going to be even greater. There is likely a cap on efficiency points given per game so a 20-point win is the same as a 12-point win.
How it all factors and what weights are given is unknown. So beating Team B 65-64 might actually get you a lower efficiency score than losing to them 59-58. It's unlikely, but there probably isn't a big difference between the two scores despite one being a win vs a loss.
The ironic part about what you wrote above in particular, The NET has still been getting tweaks every year and they have admitted that. So, it isn't just an efficiency site that was completed and used over and over again with the same exact weights put in place since its origination. It changes depending on how the people running it want it to change. We don't even know if they change it midseason or during the season, and, I wouldn't be surprised if they do.
Like I said, they literally have the ability to move teams in the rankings up and down the way they please without explaining to anyone why.
If you have problems with NET, why on earth would you want to average it out with an even stupider system in the RPI?
I mean even the guy who invented the RPI said that they shouldn't be using it the way that they did, that it was never meant to determine how the teams ranked.
To make things more fair. I believe all the ranking systems have flaws, including Torvik and Pomeroy. The easiest way to remove flaws from one site is to average it out with another site. You could even use poll rankings if you want. I just dont think 1 system like the net should be the be all end all system. Especially when it isnt explained to people the exact way teams are ranked.
Take it one step further. It doesn’t really care if you win or lose.
Each team can be normalized as to how you’d expect that a team would perform on both sides of the ball against an “average” quality opponent, ranked from Purdue to Delaware State. So let’s say that the “average” team would score 74 points on Team X’s defense, and Team X’s offense would score 65 points against the “average” defense.
So you’re playing team X, and your offense scores 73 points, and your defense allows 71. You win the game! But you actually ended up performing below the level that you would expect the average team to accomplish, so it’s judged as a subpar performance. Winning doesn’t really matter - it’s a byproduct of playing well.
Which is why teams like Pitt, who got blown out in very bad games early, had a recent bad game against a team that the NET really dislikes in FSU, and were decidedly unimpressive against a handful of bad teams in the OOC (Alabama State and William and Mary, specifically), are ranked lower than you’d expect.
The thing is that VT is a pretty good team. The SMF eye test says they are probably like the 4th or 5th best team in the ACC. I know you wont like this, but they are better than us and really not much worse than Clemson. And the predictive metrics would show that. But this is why your own NET isnt used much. Because it gives a lot of value to "Vegas" metrics that dont take into account games you actually won or lost.
The eye test should be used.
Virginia Tech is 13-4 with Hunter Cattoor in the lineup and he is now back to playing. Tech has wins against Duke, Syracuse, Penn State, North Carolina, Dayton etc. with him in the lineup. Virginia Tech is a completely different team with him.
The eye test should be used discretionarily when seeding teams. And injuries / suspensions absolutely need to be taken into consideration.
The goal of the tournament should be the auto qualifiers plus the best teams left remaining based on multiple efficiency sites plus the eye test.
I dont need an efficiency website for example like NET, torvik, or pomeroy to tell me a team like Ohio State has zero business anywhere near the tournament at this point. And I really dont care the 3 of them all believe Ohio State is a top 30 team when they clearly are not while they sit at the bottom of the big ten.
Wins matter more than anything, including efficiency.
Jerry Palm has VT in the Last 4 In in his new update and its hard to disagree with him. With Catoor, they are a 4-5 seed quality team in my opinion. They go to Miami and then host UVa. Win those 2 and they are pretty safely in IMO despite being 5-7 in the ACC. FWIW he has Pitt in the Last 4 Byes.
You know that the team sheets that the committee uses have more metrics on them than just the NET, right? There isn't any need to average together the NET and Pomeroy and Sagarin or whatever, because they have those ratings right there in front of them.
In fact the team sheets have six different metrics on them. Three of them are "efficiency" metrics, two of them are results oriented metrics, and then the NET rating, which was originally a bastardization of the two but which seems to now be more of an efficiency metric than a results metric.
Sure hope that they don't have a metric like Pomeroy in front of them given they have teams like 10-13 Washington State from the PAC12, who I think is rated right around the ACC and Sam Houston State, whose in 5th place in the WAC, ahead of Pitt.
Hard to make much sense out of these computer ratings, but like you said, efficiency over outcomes, I suppose...
I have posted this link several times but this talks about the importance of computer metrics. Similar to your own NET rank, its like a Tier 3 criteria. The way I see it, if teams are so close in the most important criteria, maybe it comes down to who has the higher NET or who would win if they played (predictive metrics)
Bracketology: Explaining the 'team sheets' the selection committee uses to compare NCAA Tournament résumés
What exactly is the selection committee looking at from each team when it builds the NCAA Tournament bracket?
www.cbssports.com
