Maryland only up from 24 to20 after the road beat down of Illinois and Illinois only drops 1 from 8 to 9. Wow. Just Wow at this model.
THE OFFICIAL 2024-2025 NET RANKINGS THREAD
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I think what had had a large negative impact on the Missouri Valley Conference's at-large chances came from the departures of Creighton (2013) and Wichita St (2017), which coincided with the switch to the NET system in 2018.
Over the 20 years up to Wichita St's departure, the MVC had 37 bids.... but 16 of them were from Creighton or Wichita St (10 auto-bids, 6 at-large). From 2014-2017 after Creighton left, the conference had 6 bids in 4 tournaments... and 4 were from Wichita St (2 auto, 2 at-large).
In 2018, the MVC moved forward without two of their best programs of the prior 20 years, and NET was introduced to assist with tournament selection. Sort of a perfect storm of the MVC conference SOS dropping at the same time that NET quadrants were introduced.
Since then, the MVC has had just 7 bids across 6 tournaments (1 at-large in 2021)... 3 from Drake, 3 from Loyola-Chicago, and 1 from Bradley. Those three schools had appeared in the NCAA tournament just twice in the prior 20 years (1 from Drake, 1 from Bradley).
Conference consolidation has been gradually plucking the better mid-major teams into stronger conferences, leaving behind an increase in weaker conferences in its wake.
Looking at the top 5 conferences (SEC, B1G, B12, ACC, BE), you see a lot of schools that came from mid-majors over the past 25 years: Butler, BYU, Cincinnati, Creighton, DePaul, Houston, Louisville, Marquette, SMU, TCU, UCF, Utah, Xavier. And the mid-majors that lost those schools pulled the better schools up from the next tier down (for example, C-USA was founded in 1995... not a single member from 2004 is left; the MWC grew out of the WAC in 1999, and will be unrecognizable in 2026)
Over the 20 years up to Wichita St's departure, the MVC had 37 bids.... but 16 of them were from Creighton or Wichita St (10 auto-bids, 6 at-large). From 2014-2017 after Creighton left, the conference had 6 bids in 4 tournaments... and 4 were from Wichita St (2 auto, 2 at-large).
In 2018, the MVC moved forward without two of their best programs of the prior 20 years, and NET was introduced to assist with tournament selection. Sort of a perfect storm of the MVC conference SOS dropping at the same time that NET quadrants were introduced.
Since then, the MVC has had just 7 bids across 6 tournaments (1 at-large in 2021)... 3 from Drake, 3 from Loyola-Chicago, and 1 from Bradley. Those three schools had appeared in the NCAA tournament just twice in the prior 20 years (1 from Drake, 1 from Bradley).
Conference consolidation has been gradually plucking the better mid-major teams into stronger conferences, leaving behind an increase in weaker conferences in its wake.
Looking at the top 5 conferences (SEC, B1G, B12, ACC, BE), you see a lot of schools that came from mid-majors over the past 25 years: Butler, BYU, Cincinnati, Creighton, DePaul, Houston, Louisville, Marquette, SMU, TCU, UCF, Utah, Xavier. And the mid-majors that lost those schools pulled the better schools up from the next tier down (for example, C-USA was founded in 1995... not a single member from 2004 is left; the MWC grew out of the WAC in 1999, and will be unrecognizable in 2026)
Point taken but in the scenerio described it would be a much bigger snub for Drake. Monmouth 2016-17 lacked the RPI equivalent of what today is classified as a Q1 win. Drake is 2-0 in Q1 and that won’t change unless Bradley moves into the NET top 50 and they play again in their tourney. Drake is 1-1 vs Q2, but they have 4 more opportunities to stockpile Q2 wins before their conference tournament. Also, even though Miami and KState aren’t good, having those wins to pair with the Vandy win is a big thing for a mid major with a gaudy record.
yeah - this is by far their best chance in a while tobe a multi bid conference.
I think Drake just needs to avoid bad losses at this point. They can't afford to drop a game to, say, Missouri St, Evansville, or Indiana St.... or even to Illinois St, Northern Iowa at home, or Loyola-Chicago really. If they sweep those 7 games, they could potentially lose 3 of the remaining 4 (Bradley, @Northern Iowa, @Murray St, @Illinois St) and still be considered a potential "bid stealer" going into the MVC tournament.
Meanwhile, if Bradley can run the table (no Q3/Q4 losses, and wins @Drake, @Illinois St, and @Northern Iowa)... they could also be bubbly if they were to lose the MVC championship game to Drake. (heading into the MVC at 1-0 Q1, 6-3 Q2, with a clean sheet in Q3/Q4). That's a big IF though - bart predicts they'll pick up 3 more losses over their remaining slate.
To be fair, it’s their second win over a sure tournament team (UCLa at home was their first). So there’s that. The better question is about the team right in front of Maryland. I’m not sure why the Zags are rated so high in NET?
It’s really those quad 4s at this point. Remember - if NI hypothetically knocked them off at home that would be a Q1 win for NI and boost their numbers too. It’d still be Q3 but likely move them solidly in the top 100. Not an awful loss.
I do think it’s better for the sport in the long run for a couple mid majors to earn At Large bids from conferences that don’t normally earn them. So I’m rooting for it.
We've jumped the shark discussing Drake, Princeton and UC Irvine.....and how Indiana State and Seton Hall was a ratings winner, which is certainly possible with no other basketball games on TV that night.
In any event, no one here actually believes Princeton or Drake or UC Irvine is better than most of the teams in the B1G, Big 12 or SEC over a 20 game confidence schedule.
I'm waiting for the ESPN+ subscription to watch Drake vs Missouri State.....which could be a great game. But we have fans stuck in the 1980s, when Georgetown played Princeton one time and almost defeated Patrick Ewing and the mighty Hoyas.
I really hope that one day, all of these really good schools that are in the MVC, Sun Belt, Ohio Valley, MAC and others get a very fair playing field where those league and the Ivy League or whomever else can play a 32 game tournament and let the winners of those 4 games advance to play the seeded teams that ultimately generate the revenue for the sport.
It is NOT fair that Drake can go 26-5 and miss the NCAAs.....let those schools get a chance to win 30 games to make the NCAAs in a play-in scenario. Other than that, it's absurd to think people want to see Drake or Princeton as 14 seeds, when they can battle it out to be a 10 or 11 seed. Let the Power 4/5 teams that have invested into their programs, the real opportunities to compete in the post season, if they're on the "bubble", just seed them as a 14 or 15 seed and let them play UConn or Kansas as a 2 or 3 seed.
In any event, no one here actually believes Princeton or Drake or UC Irvine is better than most of the teams in the B1G, Big 12 or SEC over a 20 game confidence schedule.
I'm waiting for the ESPN+ subscription to watch Drake vs Missouri State.....which could be a great game. But we have fans stuck in the 1980s, when Georgetown played Princeton one time and almost defeated Patrick Ewing and the mighty Hoyas.
I really hope that one day, all of these really good schools that are in the MVC, Sun Belt, Ohio Valley, MAC and others get a very fair playing field where those league and the Ivy League or whomever else can play a 32 game tournament and let the winners of those 4 games advance to play the seeded teams that ultimately generate the revenue for the sport.
It is NOT fair that Drake can go 26-5 and miss the NCAAs.....let those schools get a chance to win 30 games to make the NCAAs in a play-in scenario. Other than that, it's absurd to think people want to see Drake or Princeton as 14 seeds, when they can battle it out to be a 10 or 11 seed. Let the Power 4/5 teams that have invested into their programs, the real opportunities to compete in the post season, if they're on the "bubble", just seed them as a 14 or 15 seed and let them play UConn or Kansas as a 2 or 3 seed.
Their scheduling and blowing out cupcakes got their NET high to begin with and they seemed like a paper tiger because they were 0-4 on the road before last night. But last night was an annililation of an Illinois team that was 8 in the NET , a high Quad 1A win on the road . Only Illinois did that to Oregon earlier in the year and Oregon dropped 10 spots and Illinois went up 7-8 spots. That Maryland win was not only their best win of the year but might have been the best win of any team in the country this year.
It's definitely hard to figure this thing out sometimes. Without playing, we advanced more spots than Illinois dropped after losing at home by 19. Crazy. My daughter just went back for her last semester at UMD. I really hope they make the tournament. Last night gave them a massive boost, regardless of how the NET reacted.
Drake's pretty good year, but those three leagues are almost in their own sub-division at the top of Div-I this year. And that trend may continue to mean less parity across college basketball.
Still, I think segregating out the mid/low-major schools into a separate tournament would lower overall casual interest in the NCAA tournament. It would essentially remove the concept of the "Cinderella" from March, and lose all of the David-beats-Goliath storylines leading into the Sweet 16. The "root for the underdog" allure is lost when it's the 8th team from the SEC playing the 2nd team from the B12.
Last year saw the highest record viewership of the first weekend - a large part of that is driven by the storylines of "never heard of them" beating "brand name" among people who don't follow the sport 11 months out of the year. Segregating the top and bottom into separate tournaments may make more competitive sense - but I don't think it's good for overall fandom, and may end up being less commercially successful.
Agree...Indiana State was close to getting in last year i think at 27-6 if it wasnt for bid stealers i believe they were 3rd team out
Everything's interconnected. Kennesaw St jumped up 19 ranks beating New Mexico St by 13 on the road (big Q2 win), which helped us. Merrimack's 11 pt win at St. Peter's pretty much canceled each other out, since we played both.
Wow what a second half as they were down 35-25 at the half and outscored them 44-21 in the second half.
I would think early in the season there would be more movement with each game having more impact since less games had been played?
I think most teams have 7-8 games already in the books by the time the first net rankings come out. There's definitely more movement early if a team has an unexpectedly good or bad performance, but that's already 25% of the season to establish a baseline.
Of course - but even still. Now we’re at 20 games played. The impact that any one new game outcome is having in the rankings is likely to be less now than it was then simply because it’s 1/20th of a sample rather than 1/8th.
Yes, but since it's based on efficiency, any movement at all is based on performance that is significantly better or worse than the standard set over the first chunk of the year. If you are playing to the model's expectation (win or lose), you won't move much... and 7-8 games set that model expectation up front.
One outlier still has more impact on blended efficiency level early on though doesn’t it?
Yes, but outliers also aren't very common.
It's also much easier to move in the middle area of the bell curve than to get to the narrow end of one. There are also clusters of closely packed teams we don't have transparency into (e.g., can be much easier to go from 95 to 85 than from 85 to 84). It's easier moving to the front of the pelaton than breaking away from the pelaton to join the chase group.
All of that makes sense. I think this came up
though when someone commented about how a road win over a top team boosted the team’s NET more early on than it did for Maryland vs Illinois. A team could have random lights out shooting day and pull a major upset at any point. If it happens to occur after only 7 games were played, you’re obviously going to see a temporary boost, until future performances normalize it.
Rutgers drop a couple spots to 83.
Michigan State slips a spot to 17
Minnesota moves to 96 and with Washington at 99, all 18 Big 10 schools currently reside in the top 100.
Merrimack at 164 is closing in on actually becoming a Quad 3 win
Michigan State slips a spot to 17
Minnesota moves to 96 and with Washington at 99, all 18 Big 10 schools currently reside in the top 100.
Merrimack at 164 is closing in on actually becoming a Quad 3 win
You stole my thunder. I was going to post this plus the fact that everyone in the SEC has a NET of 90 or better. Big 10 and SEC the only conferences where every team is in the top 100. Pretty cool.
So the two conferences combined make up 34 teams. They doublehandedly represent more than 1/3 of all top 100 teams.
13 of 16 B12 teams are in the Top 100, too.... and the last three are 102, 103, and 110.
# of teams in Top 100 by conference:
18 - B1G
16 - SEC
13 - B12
10 - ACC
9 - BE
6 - WCC, MWC
5 - A10
3 - MVC
2 - CUSA, Big West
1 - Southland, WAC, Sun Belt, Big South, ASUN, SoCon, Ivy, MAC
Here are the # of teams in the Top 40 by conference:
12 - SEC
9 - B1G
7 - B12
5 - ACC
4 - BE
2 - WCC
1 - MWC
Actually up 1 to 82 probably because of UCLA win and maybe Ohio State win
yikes i could have sworn this morning it was updated at 83 when i checked at 730am but maybe it was just the records updated...thanks for the correction
Wish we had Dylan and believe me wish it was much higher. The shame this year is our out of conference is really decent instead of being in the 300’s so we wouldn’t have that argument against us. If we could only win 6 of these upcoming Quad 1 games ? Hope springs eternal
South Carolina at 90. The next worse SEC team is at 67. That's a lot of teams in the top 67.
With Dylan and the continued growth of the other young guys, I really believe we could have had a nice run here. But I think Dylan's inability to perform at his best derails the whole thing. And no Ogbole certainly doesn't help.
the reality is our net was bad around 84 after the Ohio State game before Dylan was hurt or flu ridden
had we not f'd around and found out by losing to Kennesaw and Princeton, the record would be 12-8 now and there would still be path
Wasn’t Dylan also healthy for the bad win v Seton Hall. That’s a NET killer too no?
Ace wasn't playing well back then though so we were pretty much a one man show. Like we are now. The fact that we are playing at basically the same level over the past month as we did over Nov/Dec is actually evidence that there has been a lot of improvement since we've essentially been missing what was our best player by a wide, wide margin.
Now that's not to say everything would be all roses if Harper were healthy; we still dug ourselves a pretty big hole at the beginning of the season. But I think it's pretty reasonable to think that the team, as of 1/28/2025, would be at least a bubble quality team with a healthy Harper.
Now that's not to say everything would be all roses if Harper were healthy; we still dug ourselves a pretty big hole at the beginning of the season. But I think it's pretty reasonable to think that the team, as of 1/28/2025, would be at least a bubble quality team with a healthy Harper.
We still didn't have our defense right when we played that game. It improved shortly thereafter.
thats not how it works, too many just trying to excuse the first 14 games of the season..wild
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