The first NET rankings are out from the NCAA.
Yale 25(!)
Columbia 60(!)
Cornell 116
Harvard 197
Penn 218
Princeton 263
Brown 275
Dartmouth 293
1 Like
Im looking forward to seeing this vaunted Yale team, the pizza road trip may be back on the calendar
1 Like
This are the highest seeds we’ve had for a really long time, no? At least I don’t think Columbia had ever been Top100 in the last 50 years or so
NET can be a little wonky this early in the season. I believe the first ever NET rankings had Colgate ranked 10th in December of 2018. Yale’s benefiting off of blowing the doors off of Navy and Quinnipiac.
One of the weirder anecdotes is your NET Ranking actually doesn’t matter according to the Selection Committee. Instead your opponents NET rankings and your subsequent record vs. them is the only thing found on the team sheets that they look at.
Columbia holding on to a good NET Ranking is more beneficial for Yale than the Bulldogs own high ranking.
1 Like
I’m glad the committee does that fwiw. The statisticians like Ken Pomeroy will tell you that their systems are meant to be prospective, not retrospective. Plus, I don’t think anyone wants margin of victory to influence a team’s tourney prospects.
1 Like
I would be happy to have margin of victory matter. It matters.
It unfortunately motivates coaches to run up the score against weaker opponents. The players who usually sit on the bench are thereby denied the opportunity to get some modest playing time. Margin of error should definitely be removed from counting in the NCAA Tournament selection process.
1 Like
There is very little “running up the score” potential in college basketball. And when there is, the winning team’s reserves are usually much better than the losing team’s starters.
But it would also be pretty easy to just cap the percentage margin of victory that is counted for in the rankings. Winning margins up to 125% (or similar cutoff) of the opponent’s score would count; after that there would be no premium.
If you’re ranking teams it really matters a lot from a projective point of view their relative points per possession on offense and defense. Most of the game looks a lot like independent trials by possession of those efficiencies.