NCAA tweaks formula for college basketball’s NET rankings

By Matt Tait     May 12, 2020

Nick Krug
Kansas forward David McCormack (33) get his hand caught in the net after stuffing a shot by Texas forward Kai Jones during the first half on Monday, Feb. 3, 2020 at Allen Fieldhouse.

Still just two years old, the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) ranking system is simplifying its approach.

According to an announcement from the NCAA earlier this week, the NET rankings now will be based on just two metrics instead of five.

Both will incorporate many of the same components as the old system, but the process will be tweaked in an effort to increase accuracy and simplify the rankings as a whole.

“When we adopted the NET in 2018, we had reviewed several seasons worth of data and we insisted that we would continue to evaluate the metric,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball. “We’ve been very satisfied with its performance thus far, but it became evident after two seasons of use that this change would be an improvement.”

Put into effect as a replacement for the RPI rankings to determine college basketball’s best teams, the NET now will primarily track Team Value Index and each team’s adjusted net efficiency rating.

Team Value Index rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home. The net efficiency rating, which is adjusted to account for the strength of the opponent and location of each game, now aims to put greater value on statistics recorded against stronger opponents.

The NET no longer will use winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin in its formula, and the strength-of-schedule component also has been tweaked.

The “modernized” strength of schedule is now based on rating every opponent on a team’s schedule by how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win the game. It considers opponent strength and game site, assigning a difficulty score to each game.

Gavitt said he believed these changes would put the NET in a terrific position to help determine the next several NCAA Tournament fields.

“While we will continue to monitor the metric, I don’t anticipate any additional adjustments for several years,” he said. “We believe this change will result in more precision throughout the season and will be easier for our membership and the public to understand.”

The 2019-20 Kansas Jayhawks, which finished the most recent college basketball season at 28-3 and ranked No. 1 in nearly every major poll, ended the season ranked No. 2 in the NET, behind Gonzaga.

KU finished 20th in the final version of the first ever NET rankings in March of 2019.

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Written By Matt Tait

A native of Colorado, Matt moved to Lawrence in 1988 and has been in town ever since. He graduated from Lawrence High in 1996 and the University of Kansas in 2000 with a degree in Journalism. After covering KU sports for the University Daily Kansan and Rivals.com, Matt joined the World Company (and later Ogden Publications) in 2001 and has held several positions with the paper and KUsports.com in the past 20+ years. He became the Journal-World Sports Editor in 2018. Throughout his career, Matt has won several local and national awards from both the Associated Press Sports Editors and the Kansas Press Association. In 2021, he was named the Kansas Sportswriter of the Year by the National Sports Media Association. Matt lives in Lawrence with his wife, Allison, and two daughters, Kate and Molly. When he's not covering KU sports, he likes to spend his time playing basketball and golf, listening to and writing music and traveling the world with friends and family.