We Were Wrong — the NET is Great
Now hitting at #3 and it’s only going to get better!
https://www.ncaa.com/rankings/basketball-men/d1/ncaa-mens-basketball-net-rankings
November 30th, 2018 at 9:08 AM ^
Rankings this early in the season are absolutely silly. Talk to me once there's a real sample size.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:11 AM ^
Ok. I’ll be back when we are 30-0
November 30th, 2018 at 9:27 AM ^
Sounds good. Computer models that factor in strength of schedule, W/L margins, etc. cannot possibly be accurate with a tiny sample size. They're not supposed to. As long as they get it right when it matters (selection time) who cares what they say in November.
Same applies for CFB polls 5 weeks into the season. Besides the media, who cares? Play the games and it will all sort itself out.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:01 AM ^
Just stop. You care or you wouldn’t have your fat ass sitting in your mom’s basement reading threads about rankings.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:26 AM ^
Or procrastinating away his friday morning at a responsible and relatively high-salaried job while reading threads about rankings (in between hot-takez about our OC).
Fixed.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:39 AM ^
Bingo. I'm here for the witty humor.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:33 AM ^
I like your optimism.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:11 AM ^
With our conference representing 20% of the top 50, and over 25% of the top 25, how could it be wrong?
November 30th, 2018 at 12:37 PM ^
Rutger at #49. Keep in mind it’d be less than 20% without them.
November 30th, 2018 at 12:53 PM ^
That's actually worse than kenpom too. His ranking has 10 in the top 38 (!!) and 12 in the top 53 (!!).
So the NET is mostly in line with kenpom as regards the B1G ten.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:17 AM ^
Beat Purdue.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:26 AM ^
Not just BEAT, but DESTROY!
November 30th, 2018 at 10:27 AM ^
Let's make them question their program. As a bad person, I find those to be the most satisfying.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:26 AM ^
It's like this new system doesn't even look at basketball, it just says give me all the undefeated teams, a dart board, a dart, some beer and look out. Texas Tech?
November 30th, 2018 at 2:14 PM ^
Texas Tech is 6-0, ranked 9th in kenpom and gave a good Nebraska team (21st in kenpom) their only loss of the season on a neutral floor. They also easily beat a solid USC team by 15. It's not that crazy given the small sample sizes for everyone.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:36 AM ^
Belmont at 9??? WTF is a Belmont - I thought they were a hearing aid manufacturer.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:45 AM ^
KenPom has them at #73. They're your likely #1 seed in the OVC tournament.
They also have three road wins, including one at NET #42 Lipscomb. The NET really likes road wins.
I mean, they're not the 9th best team in the country, but for a computer rating that's not taking pre-season expectations into account, it's not insane. Let's try not to judge it until mid-February at the earliest.
PS: They seem to update the NET sometime in the late morning / early afternoon each day. It hasn't actually been updated with Thursday's games yet. There wasn't a lot of basketball activity last night, so it probably doesn't matter much, but I thought I'd point that out for the future. I have a feeling many of us will eventually be checking this thing daily. :)
November 30th, 2018 at 10:01 AM ^
Belmont is a school that’s been making the tourney out of ASun and then OVC quite routinely. It’s been growing for a decade and is arguably one of the top 10 mid-majors of the past decade, consistently.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:14 AM ^
"WTF is a Belmont..."
This is a Belmont. It's a rather popular horse race held at Belmont Park, outside of New York City each year. I'm surprised anyone that follows a sport hasn't heard of it, let alone a sports fanatic like you!
November 30th, 2018 at 12:55 PM ^
That's Beltone....they are ranked #28.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:42 AM ^
So even though 10 points was set as the margin of victory cap for "blowouts," the second component of NET factors in efficiency margin which is essentially margin of victory (more blowouts equals higher efficiency margin). So unless I'm oversimplifying or misunderstanding, their "margin of victory" cap is basically pointless and is peak NCAA.
This is relevant as Michigan has yet to play a game where they did not win by at least 17 points.
November 30th, 2018 at 9:50 AM ^
Yeah, I didn't quite get that either. Unless they're going to adjust the efficiency to represent a 10-point win, which seems all sorts of wrong to me...
They also have the asinine 0.6/1.0/1.4 home/neutral/road thing that the RPI used. (For computing a team's record, you use 0.6 for a home win or road loss, 1.4 for a home loss or road win, and 1.0 otherwise). The intent was to reward road wins, which sounds benign enough. The problem is that if you have two teams under tournament consideration -- say, both with 22-10 records -- if one team had a road win and a home loss, and the other team had a road loss and a home win, and all other items are equal, the team with the road win has a lower adjusted winning percentage. I mean, it's not difficult to show mathematically (assume all other games were neutral site; 21.6-9.6 is a .692 winning percentage; 22.4-10.4 is .683), and it was a known problem with the RPI.. and they carried it over anyway.
So, I don't think the NCAA had its brightest minds working on the NET. Or, it did -- which is terrifying. :)
November 30th, 2018 at 10:20 AM ^
So, I don't think the NCAA had its brightest minds working on the NET. Or, it did -- which is terrifying. :)
Seems like it's being universally panned by the analytics crowd so I'm guessing the former.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:00 AM ^
Which is precisely why the latter option is so terrifying. :)
November 30th, 2018 at 1:00 PM ^
Isn't that the point? Winning on the road is very difficult, especially with B1G officials. You should get rewarded. Look at last year vs NC. I see nothing wrong with rewarding road wins.
November 30th, 2018 at 2:26 PM ^
Reading comprehension. The team with the road win would have a lower win percentage per this formula which was exactly the way the RPI did it.
In those two games, they get awarded a 1.4-1.4 record for the road win and home loss.
The other team gets a 0.6-0.6 record in those two games.
So the first teams overall win % gets dragged down because that 0.500 record in those two games has a higher weight (1.4) on the overall record than the 0.500 record of the other team (0.6).
November 30th, 2018 at 10:00 AM ^
I like the NET. I think these rankings will be very accurate after a large sample size. It is still way to early to make conclusions off the small sample size, even though I like our #3 spot.
November 30th, 2018 at 2:50 PM ^
It is better than RPI at this point, probably. The reason people are freaking out is that no one talked about the RPI in November so no one knew how bad it was at this point in the season. Well, the replicator RPI sites still spit out RPI so let's check in there:
RPI top 20 per RealTimeRPI.com through Nov 29 games:
1. Kansas
2. Duke
3. Oklahoma (!!)
4. Tennessee
5. Wisconsin
6. Texas
7. Gonzaga
8. Iowa
9. Radford (!!!)
10. Michigan
11. Loyola Marymount (!!)
12. Belmont (!)
13. FSU
14. Auburn
15. Nevada
16. UCF
17. Texas Tech
18. UVA
19. Citadel (!!!) 3-2 Citadel!!!!!
20. Kansas St.
In theory, it seems like they threw a bunch of things at the wall for NET and to me it makes no sense that they would us an unadjusted efficiency margin because it does the last two things the committee has wanted in the past: 1) encourages easy home scheduling because it 2) simply rewards blowouts.
It is a bad ranking system no doubt.
But in practice so far, it seems (slightly) better than RPI.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:10 AM ^
At this stage of the season, I prefer the much more critical, analytical, unbiased assertions of a little beta program I've developed called "the Salinger eye test." And oh boy is Michigan good on that index.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:18 AM ^
Color me dubious. Until the selection committee actually uses something different than RPI to RPI teams into the tunamelt, I'm just going to assume that RPI will still be consulted. Besides, I have no idea how different the NET actually is from RPI. Perhaps the new 'RPI'ing into the tourney' will be 'Net'ing into the tourney'?
Probably.
November 30th, 2018 at 10:21 AM ^
<gently putting my torch and pitchfork away>
November 30th, 2018 at 10:29 AM ^
Meh, Gonzaga should be number one in any formula after beating duke the way they did without their 2nd best player.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:16 AM ^
When Killian Tillie returns Gonzaga is going to be scary good. In the meantime, the transfer from San Jose State is doing pretty well what with his 4+ blocks per game.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:15 AM ^
Anything that shuts Ohio State the hell up I'm okay with.
November 30th, 2018 at 11:48 AM ^
Looks damn near perfect to me.
November 30th, 2018 at 12:00 PM ^
NET is a better name than RPI, so we've got that going for us.
November 30th, 2018 at 12:14 PM ^
Has Rutger as top 50 so far. Lil' Bro better watch out tonight.
November 30th, 2018 at 12:46 PM ^
Just hope we don't get matched up against Radford or Belmont early in the tournament