TombstoneTex said:

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Well we're going undefeated in conference play so....

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Love it!

Zachary Klement said:

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Creighton knocking off Kansas will give us a nice lil bump!

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Creighton can be really good (inside size and good 3-point shooting). I think they will surely be a tournament team (likely Quad 1 win for us) and possibly a Sweet 16 level team when all is said and done.

I don't think Ohio State lasts in the top 30 NET. They've gotten their high rank by OBLITERATING sub 250 competition. For example they have 50 (!) point win over #258 Evansville. And a 44 point over #271 Campbell.

HOWEVER I think both Creighton and Rutgers rise easily into the top 50. So I think we trade one Q1 win for two longterm.

Hope I'm wrong and we get all 3.

Creighton loses Pop Isaacs to season ending hip surgery.

dangit

In better news, there's almost no shot Texas Tech falls out of the top 50. Put another quad 1 win on the board!

I say kenpom is better we are #22 in that after our win today

SEC Basketball Conference is as good right now as I can remember and clearly the best hoops conference this season. Ags will get lots of chances for Q1 wins during the conference play and a LOT of SEC teams are going to make the NCAAT.

Ags have now locked up a solid non-con performance regardless of the outcome of the Purdue game. Beating Purdue would be a cherry on top. Of course, I'm assuming Ags do take care of business against the last two cupcake games at home.

9-9 in SEC would absolutely get us in and I think even 8-10 might be enough. SEC conference gonna be a brutal grind this season for everyone.

It's not only the best the league has ever been it's currently up there with the best *any* league has ever been. It's been an insane non conference run.

bobinator said:

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It's not only the best the league has ever been it's currently up there with the best *any* league has ever been. It's been an insane non conference run.

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Bob, do you agree that I could see lots of scenarios where an 8-10 conference record would be good enough for any of a number of SEC teams to get bid to NCAAT, if it happened to play out that way.

I think 7-11 could be good enough if it's the right team (one of the ones with a good non con SOS like us) But yeah, going to be multiple sub .500 teams that make it.

Taking a quick look through the SEC team records...can we yet identify a bad team that we think will almost certainly finish at or near the bottom of the conference standings? I'm not sure we can yet.

With every SEC team now 9-10 games in, which SEC team looks like it will probably be 'bad'?

South Carolina isn't bad bad but I'm confident they're the worst team in the league. They do catch a bit of a scheduling break in that they only play Alabama, Auburn, Kentucky and Tennessee once each.

Going off Kenpom as of now, 13 of the 16 SEC teams are ranked in the top-50 and the three teams outside the top-50 are:

LSU #52
Vanderbilt #60
South Carolina #68

Which I guess are your current-running candidates for the 'Bad' SEC teams


Last season Mizzou finished #145 in Kenpom, LSU #95, Ole Miss #86, and Georgia #84

Texas better perform in the league.

I'm not convinced they're really any good.

It's a wild year when it feels like we caught a schedule break by getting OU, Texas and LSU twice.

What is the calculation variable that allows 7-2 Tech to still be one NET spot ahead of 8-2 Texas A&M, given A&M has the head to head win, A&M I believe has more QUad 1 and Quad 2 games/wins (although the NET site doesn't have that data shown the last couple days).

Something from last year still influencing standing?

The NET doesn't carry any preseason data into it. Presumably the reason Tech is ahead is they've just been a more dominant team more of the time, even adjusting for their schedule.

But the NET will sort itself out for major conference teams.

You also have to remember the quads are just a sorting tool, they don't have any influence on the actual rankings. Overperforming against better/higher ranked teams will typically help your ranking, but the system/formula itself is not saying "A&M has won X Quad 1 games, therefore they should move up."

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2022-12-05/college-basketballs-net-rankings-explained

The NET includes more components than just winning percentage. It takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses.


The way the article was written, it's hard to tell if "quad" is built in - strength of schedule, quality of wins and losses are built in. However, its written to imply the actual QUAD outcomes is something ELSE that is looked at, in addition to the NET.

NET is its own thing (its a ranking of teams using an adjusted net efficiency metric), however they dont use it primarily as a flat out ranking by itself. Its used to judge the quality of wins and losses and the method for doing so is the quad system.

I think I'd push back on the idea that they don't use it as a ranking by itself.

But yeah for some reason everyone's head starts spinning when you use numbers so yeah, the quad system is just a way to dumb it down for the sake of conversation. People get way too caught up in it though worrying about a quad 1 game becoming quad 2 or whatever in December.

But this whole deal basically always come down the same few things, no matter what sort of fancy numbers you use to sort the teams out:

- Did you beat anyone in the top 25-30? (bonus points if you beat them on the road)
- If you didn't, did you avoid losing to anyone very bad?
- Did you challenge yourself with your non-con schedule? (bonus points if you actually beat any of the good teams)
- Are you in a major conference?

You need 3/4 of those to be yes and you're probably in the NCAA Tournament.

NET is NCAA proprietary so I'm not sure exactly how all the factors are combined. A subjective explanation is provided by the NCAA of the notional methodology and mentions changes over time, the women's NET, and the quad system.

https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2022-12-05/college-basketballs-net-rankings-explained

Complete Idiot said:

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https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-men/article/2022-12-05/college-basketballs-net-rankings-explained

The NET includes more components than just winning percentage. It takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses.


The way the article was written, it's hard to tell if "quad" is built in - strength of schedule, quality of wins and losses are built in. However, its written to imply the actual QUAD outcomes is something ELSE that is looked at, in addition to the NET.

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The Quad wins/losses are determined by the NET rankings, not a part of the calculations to get the NET rankings (that would be impossible).

Beating a Top 30 NET team at home / Top 50 NET team at neutral site / Top 75 team on the road is considered at "Quad 1" win.

I guess, to get back to original question, is what part of the calculation leads to Texas Tech, and even Ohio State, being ranked above or near us? Nothing jumps out to me except TT and OSU really put big point differentials on lesser teams.

If that's the only thing you're seeing, then that's probably the biggest difference. They've been more efficient in their wins than we have, especially Ohio State who's coupling that with a decent SOS so far. In fact most of the Big Ten's numbers are going to be a little inflated right now because they've all played two conference games.

As the season goes on the impact of this lessens, but right now that's just a lot of the data.

I go back and forth on if it's good though. On one hand, it's annoying to see teams ranked high that haven't played anyone. But on the other, blowing out everyone is very hard to do, and it's super risky. You have a couple of bad games against bad teams and you trash your metrics, and heaven forbid you lose a game and it becomes like an anchor on your numbers all season.

Miller inspired me to put together my own sheet.

What do we use for strength of schedule?

You can see the data the NCAA uses here. They use NET SOS.

bobinator said:

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You can see the data the NCAA uses here. They use NET SOS.

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https://www.warrennolan.com/basketball/2024/sos-net#google_vignette

Wow then we're 18th with a non-conference of 21st.

Crazy high

EDIT: the NCAA shows us at 52nd. Hmm

I think (because I dont know the actual formula) but one of the problems with NET is that i think it actually double counts margin of victory while claiming to cap it at 10 points. I think this is possibly just sheer ignorance of math, but Im not sure.

Margin of victory is already included in efficiency . For example, at kenpom (another efficiency metric) our offensive efficiency is 114.6 points per 100 possessions. Our defensive efficiency is 93.8 points allowed per 100 possessions. So our total is a net +20.8. So if you're blowing people out, your efficiency will already be higher and vice versa because the raw stat in efficiency is points, (ie score).

If they also adjust the wins and losses component for margin of victory, they are actually throwing in MORE margin of victory but I think they think they are capping margin by limiting it to 10 points.