You are here
Home > College Sports > Bubble Watch 2022: How the NET impacts NCAA tournament selection

Bubble Watch 2022: How the NET impacts NCAA tournament selection

Regular Bubble Watch 2022 readers know that the NET rankings come up from time to time when assessing a team’s chances of earning an at-large bid.

Strictly speaking, the NET is a sorting metric. The ranking carried by an opponent is used along with the game’s location (home, road or neutral) to assess how much credit to give a team for a particular win.

In theory, a team’s own NET ranking is useful merely for weighing the profiles of its opponents. That’s the case in most instances.

Nevertheless, in the 2019 and 2021 selections that used the NET rankings, there was quite naturally a relationship between carrying a good number in the metric and a team’s placement in the bracket. For example, here’s how Selection Sunday played out last year from the perspective of the NET.

The top 41 teams in the NET rankings all heard their names called. Conversely, no team ranked lower than No. 72 earned an at-large bid.

In between Nos. 41 and 73 is where, in effect, the committee went shopping for profiles they liked. There were some teams with very good NET rankings in that range that were passed over (Penn State at No. 42, Saint Louis at No. 43), and there were teams with lower NET rankings that earned a bid anyway (Michigan State at No. 70, Wichita State at No. 72).

Perhaps the same dynamic will play out this March. Despite not being shown here at Bubble Watch 2022, teams like Mississippi State, Saint Louis and Missouri State all have very good NET rankings, in the 50s. On the other hand, the 70-or-lower rankings of Oregon, Rutgers, Iona and Virginia are being discussed here thoroughly.

Here’s our current projection of the bubble:

FacebookTwitterEmailWhatsAppBloggerShare
Tutorialspoint
el-admin
el-admin
EltasZone Sportswriters, Sports Analysts, Opinion columnists, editorials and op-eds. Analysis from The Zone Team
Top