NCAA Basketball: A look back on season one of the NET rankings

What effects will the NET have in the sport for 2019-20 and beyond?

Now that teams have played a full season with the NET, many of them have adapted their scheduling process, likely in order to optimize their rankings. The Pac-12, for example, updated its conference-wide scheduling policies and raised the minimum average NET rating for its member schools’ non-conference opponents. This strikes as a reactionary measure to the league’s poor showing nationally last season and its meager representation in the Big Dance.

Colorado won 23 games and finished above .500 in a Power 5 conference, but still found themselves sitting at #65 in the final NET rankings. This is likely due to their weak non-conference slate, in which they faced only one team in the final Top 100 of the NET. Compounding this cupcake schedule was the fact that the Buffaloes didn’t exactly blow teams out of the water like NC State did. Thus, the Buffs end up nearly thirty spots lower.

By requiring that teams play a tougher schedule, the conference may be aiming to improve its teams’ NET rankings in order to secure a few extra spots in the NCAA Tournament. It will be interesting to see what effects this policy change actually has and to see if other conferences begin to follow suit. We’ve seen leagues such as the Conference USA experiment with new scheduling formats for conference play, as well. This is another way to shoehorn quality opponents into the schedule of the league’s better teams and perhaps raise their slim chances of getting an at-large bid or at least improving the seeding of their automatic qualifier.

Conference USA and Their Bold Scheduling Strategy: Did it work?By Mark Adams, President, ENTHUSIADAMS™Much has been…

Posted by EnthusiAdams on Tuesday, April 2, 2019

As far as in-game effects, the issues regarding scoring margin certainly left some fingerprints on the court throughout the 2018-19 campaign. Besides teams like NC State benefiting from running up the score against a weak schedule, teams also changed their game-end strategies to account for the score of the game. Buzz Williams addressed this after calling a timeout to draw up a play that earned his team an eight-point defeat, as opposed to an 11-point one. This isn’t necessarily a significant change in strategy, but the idea that it is directly related to a specific ratings system does make the shift more notable.

But that brings it all back to the idea of transparency. Perhaps the schools know a little more than the general public, but these scheduling policies, conference-play formats, and in-game strategies have been implemented with some blind faith that they will help boost NET ratings – and that having a high NET ranking is actually important. But who knows for sure?

It will be interesting to compare how the NET rankings track throughout the 2019-20 season. Will the first release cause the same kind of stir that it did last November? Will we see schools trying to game the system? Will this season’s NCAA Tournament field feature teams with similar profiles to last year’s clubs? These questions and more abound as we prepare to see Season Two of the NET.