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NCAA releases first NET rankings

I'm fine with it, but I still don't get how Duke can be ahead of Kansas and Kentucky.. both of whom beat Duke, and both of which are undefeated. I wonder if it's their SOS to date that's helping them. But it's a pretty flawed metric to have a team thats already at 2 losses, be ranked 4th.
Me either. That win will pay off all year for seeding purposes.
 
I'm fine with it, but I still don't get how Duke can be ahead of Kansas and Kentucky.. both of whom beat Duke, and both of which are undefeated. I wonder if it's their SOS to date that's helping them. But it's a pretty flawed metric to have a team thats already at 2 losses, be ranked 4th.
I can't imagine what the season long Duke and Flagg hype would be if Duke had beaten UK and Kansas. Ugh. But, I guess, if that were the case, it would probably be warranted. To an extent.
 
I mean this honestly, has there ever been a single one of these rankings that has ranked UK HIGHER than we expect/believe? I can't recall a single one, maybe a few of Cal's recent years did they give us the benefit of the doubt. But it seems KU and Duke consistently get some weird bump up, probably due to some odd metric.

Like, I don't believe we are the #1 team in the nation.. but hell, if we have the highest scoring offense, 2nd in point differential, 3rd in rebounds, have the best 3pt shooter in the nation.. and there's a team at 4th, with 2 losses, who we BEAT.. then maybe it's not outlandish to think we're #1. (Our defense is probably what holds us back, somewhere in the 120s, but I have a feeling that's due to us taking our foot off the gas in a bunch of games we had wrapped up with 8-10 min left)

IDK, just Monday morning rants while I avoid my actual work lol.
 
These will change a lot in the coming months. I don’t put much trust in them at this point. But how is Auburn not #1?

If we can take care of business this week by beating Clemson and Gonzaga, our resume would be stellar.

It seems reasonable.

Kenpom has it as Auburn 1 UT 2 but I think an argument can be made either way.

Tenn has knocked off Baylor, Louisville and Virginia .....the latter two by 20+ and Baylor double digits. They smashed everyone they were supposed to smash as well

Auburn has definitely had the harder schedule. They had the two biggest wins over Iowa St and Houston between the two teams but those games were only by 5 and 2. NET kind of looks at those games for what they were.......games that could have gone either way. Obviously when seeding comes into play, the wins are already on the board and will be huge for them. But NET factors in efficiency margin which does matter when predicting the strength of teams.

I guess if one doesn't take into account scoring margin obviously Auburn has to be 1. But NET factors that in. Which is why this makes sense.

FWIW since Kenpom follows Vegas lines pretty closely, currently Auburn would be a 1 point favorite to UT on a neutral court. The difference right now between the two according to most systems is minimal.
 
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This is beautiful. Like we've complained in past years with the ACC, Big 12 and Big Ten, the SEC is going to benefit from the inflated computer numbers this year.

Right now, 15 of 16 SEC teams will be QUAD 1 road games. This basically means that every road game, as they are TOUGH, will be QUAD 1 opportunities.

As of today, Kentucky has 13 QUAD 1 games in SEC play, along with Clemson, Gonzaga, Ohio State and potentially Louisville.
 
Net Rankings has to be off this early: if it goes by wins, quad 1 wins and such, Auburn should be #1 right now. They have beaten some good teams. Have not lost a game. Tennessee has won some good games but I do not think at the same level as Auburn.
 
It seems reasonable.

Kenpom has it as Auburn 1 UT 2 but I think an argument can be made either way.

Tenn has knocked off Baylor, Louisville and Virginia .....the latter two by 20+ and Baylor double digits. They smashed everyone they were supposed to smash as well

Auburn has definitely had the harder schedule. They had the two biggest wins over Iowa St and Houston between the two teams but those games were only by 5 and 2. NET kind of looks at those games for what they were.......games that could have gone either way. Obviously when seeding comes into play, the wins are already on the board and will be huge for them. But NET factors in efficiency margin which does matter when predicting the strength of teams.

I guess if one doesn't take into account scoring margin obviously Auburn has to be 1. But NET factors that in. Which is why this makes sense.

FWIW since Kenpom follows Vegas lines pretty closely, currently Auburn would be a 1 point favorite to UT on a neutral court. The difference right now between the two according to most systems is minimal.

Reasonable? Sure. I don’t know who else other than maybe KU could have a claim to the #2 spot. But, to answer my own question, these models give too much credit to those mid tier wins that UT has. Maybe the margin of victory is boosting them as you say, but Auburn has some healthy wins too. Auburn has 3 top 20 wins, and 2 top 10. UT does not have any top 20 wins. UT is taking care of business but Auburn has earned their wins against a brutal schedule. UT is very deserving of a top 3 ranking but I don’t think they have a claim to the top ranking. But like I said these things are far from a finished product. The NET is a tool but not the only one so it’s no big deal whether UT is 1 or 3.
 
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I wonder what made Tennessee so good finally. Maybe finally getting rid of some of these 6-year bums, with guys like Vescovi and Fulkerson.

I also wonder how much playing a team like Virginia helped their defensive metrics, when Virginia can't score 50 in an open gym to begin with.

Virginia couldn't even best my Jaspers by double digits and they are one of the worst teams in D1. Not at all impressed with them, and therefore, Tennessee beating them.

Edit: Virginia is just 20 spots higher in Kenpom than WKU and just 10 spots higher than Lipscomb. I'd make the argument that Tennesses schedule just LOOKS more difficult because it has some bigger names.
 
I just can't respect a metric that puts a 2 loss team ahead of two undefeated teams who beat that team. Just don't release this ish if the data at this point is non sensical.
 
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Reasonable? Sure. I don’t know who else other than maybe KU could have a claim to the #2 spot. But, to answer my own question, these models give too much credit to those mid tier wins that UT has. Maybe the margin of victory is boosting them as you say, but Auburn has some healthy wins too. Auburn has 3 top 20 wins, and 2 top 10. UT does not have any top 20 wins. UT is taking care of business but Auburn has earned their wins against a brutal schedule. UT is very deserving of a top 3 ranking but I don’t think they have a claim to the top ranking. But like I said these things are far from a finished product. The NET is a tool but not the only one so it’s no big deal whether UT is 1 or 3.

I don't disagree with any of that. And I think this is the primary reason why we still have humans and basing seeding on "resume" rather than the models.

This kind drives home the whole thing when it comes to seeding. You have "resume (actual results)" and you got "computer models". Most of the time the two align but sometimes they don't. In other words the team with the best resume might actually NOT be the "best team".

People realize this with Gonzaga right. Like you look at the resumes of various teams and then you look at the Zags and despite scheduling well in the non conference, it's just not there most of the years. But we realize they are a good team and seed them accordingly. But we don't do this with power conference teams. It's strictly resume there. Sure NET gets plastered on the team sheets, but it's really about who did you beat.

This is why on the Bracket Matrix if you look at all the teams the biggest seeding disagreements tend to be with the non power conference teams. People just have no idea without a resume how to accurately seed them.

Auburn has a better resume up to this point. But it's entirely possible UT might be the better team when it's all said and done.
 
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I wonder what made Tennessee so good finally. Maybe finally getting rid of some of these 6-year bums, with guys like Vescovi and Fulkerson.

I also wonder how much playing a team like Virginia helped their defensive metrics, when Virginia can't score 50 in an open gym to begin with.

Virginia couldn't even best my Jaspers by double digits and they are one of the worst teams in D1. Not at all impressed with them, and therefore, Tennessee beating them.

Edit: Virginia is just 20 spots higher in Kenpom than WKU and just 10 spots higher than Lipscomb. I'd make the argument that Tennesses schedule just LOOKS more difficult because it has some bigger names.

The defensive metrics are usually tempo adjusted (well any good one would be). So the slow tempo shouldn't really be a factor.

The fact that UVA is rated 173rd in offensive adjusted efficiency definitely does tho lol.

But at the end of the day these systems it's always about 1) what were u expected to do and 2) what did you actually do. So UVA having a completely D-1 avg offense, UT "should" have put up decent figures. Like the fact that UVA offense isn't good is already baked into the expectation.

Just looking at that game, UVA was predicted to score 60 points in 64 possessions. That's 0.94 points per possession.
They scored 42 points on 60 possessions. That's 0.7 points per possession.

So yeah UT probably got a bit of a bump from that. But it was also probably deserved.

And they did. 90.8 that morning to 88.8 the next day. Which pushed them from 4th overall defensive to 1st.

But again ......one game lol. And given they already had that good defensive rating before that game......welp I mean Barnes teams have always had that.
 
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Looks like last five years, UT has had top 5 defensive efficiencies.

The difference this season so far is they now have a top 11 offense to go along with it.
 
Zeglier is dishing out a lot of assists.

Yep.

At the end of the day I figure that Auburn and UT will be battling it out for the SEC title this season.

My god there's a ton of good teams in the SEC this season.

Home court is going to be huge in these games. With the closeness of how everyone in this conference is rated, I figure a lot of games will simply come down to home field advantage.

I'm willing to bet at the end of the season, when looking at conference games I bet the SEC has one of the highest % of games won by the home team just because that's the only thing that is going to separate teams in a large majority of these games.
 
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