Welcome to college basketball season, folks.
Well, let me be a little more specific — to the fans who began to pay attention to Ohio State basketball over the last few weeks because the football team has
nearly a month long layoff between games, welcome to college basketball season.
Ohio State is 9-3 this season, with those losses to Pittsburgh (again), Illinois, and North Carolina. They’re 1-1 in the Big Ten, with Rutgers — the worst team in the Big Ten according to both the NET Rankings and KenPom — up next on Friday night.
ESPN’s basketball power index gives Ohio State an 80.2% chance to win and improve to 2-1 in conference play. KenPom gives the Buckeyes a 78% chance to win. But even if they win, the Buckeyes probably won’t rise too much in the NET, which is the rankings system the NCAA Tournament committee relies on to sort out the tournament field.
Why not? Well, despite it being a road game, Friday’s game against the Scarlet Knights is classified as a Quad-3 game based on their ranking — 198.
Since this is the time of year when many fans migrate over and start paying attention to basketball, it felt like an appropriate time to put together a quick refresher about the NET. What is the NET? Is the NET important? Is the NET stupid? What is the Quad system? Is the Quad system fair? What’s a bad loss in the Quad system?
Let’s talk about that.
What is the NET?
The non-official answer: The NET is the most important ranking system in college basketball. The AP Poll has more prestige, and KenPom makes more sense, but — like most things in college sports — the most important ranking system is the veiled, flawed one that the NCAA oversees itself.
The NET was introduced in 2018, replacing RPI. Matter of fact, Ohio State was the first-ever No. 1 team in the NET, debuting at the top of the rankings in 2018 when the metric debuted.
The NET is calculated by factoring in two things — a Team Value Index (TVI), which is solely results-based. It rewards teams for quality victories, especially road victories against quality teams. It also factors in a “net efficiency rating”, which is similar to KenPom’s rankings. While the exact algorithm is not public, efficiency generally describes how many points a team scores per possession on offense and how many points a team gives up per possession on defense.
In short: How well did a team play on any given night? Did a team win or lose a close game? A close result may not crush your rating as much as a blowout would.
When the NCAA Tournament rolls around, the NET is one of the most important metrics that the NCAA Tournament committee uses to compare teams. Last year, all eight Big Ten teams that made the NCAA Tournament finished in the top-30 of the NET. Ohio State finished 39th in the NET last year.
Is the NET important?
Very much so. On Selection Sunday, the committee will not be comparing AP Rankings of teams, they’ll be comparing the NET. When it comes down to it, a team’s NET ranking may be the deciding factor of why one team gets in and another team is left out. It’s not the only thing that matters on Selection Sunday, but it’s up there.
Is the NET stupid?
As are many things in college sports, the NET has its flaws. First off and as stated above, the algorithm to calculate the NET rankings is not public. Every day the NET rankings are refreshed, but neither coaches nor fans can see how those rankings were calculated. The NCAA Tournament committee then consults this ranking system that was calculated completely in-house behind a curtain to help determine which teams play in the NCAA Tournament, which impacts coaches, players, and institutions and can potentially have huge financial and career-altering impacts. So yeah, the fact that it is calculated by a mystery algorithm is questionable.
Second, the NET uses a Quad system to categorize a team’s wins, which I’ll go over shortly. For example, a “Quad-1 Home Win” is a home win over a team ranked 1-30 in the NET. That means a home win over No. 1 Michigan holds the same weight as a win over No. 27 Saint Louis or No. 28 Saint Mary’s (not to pick on the Saints, but still). That in itself seems a bit flawed, since beating Michigan feels like a considerably bigger accomplishment.
What is the Quad System?
Jumped the gun on this one in the previous section, I suppose, huh? The Quad System categorizes a team’s wins and losses into four “quads” to make it easier to compare teams’ resumes come March. A team’s wins refresh daily, so a win against someone may qualify as a Quad-1 game when the game happens, but a month later, the win could drop to a Quad-2 if that team is not playing well.
For example, when Ohio State lost to Pitt, the Panthers were No. 147 in the NET, so even a road loss to the Panthers was still a Quad-3 loss. Since then Pitt has risen to No. 115 in the NET, so that Quad-3 loss for the Buckeyes is now a Quad-2 loss, which helps the resume.
Here’s the breakdown for the four Quad categories:
- Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
- Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
- Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
- Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
Is the Quad System Fair?
The quad system is not perfect, but it is one of the more useful ideas the NCAA has had in the last decade, in my opinion. It gives a more concrete way to compare resumes, and also allows more credit to be given to teams who play a more competitive schedule. Being able to quantify a win or loss in the eyes of the NCAA Tournament committee in January is very useful for fans, coaches, and the media.
However, as I mentioned above briefly, the ranges for each quad are pretty broad. Objectively, winning on the road at Michigan (No. 1 in NET) this year is a more impressive win than winning on the road at Northwestern (No. 73 in NET). But since the range for a Quad-1 road win is 1-75, both of these hypothetical wins — one of which Ohio State has under its belt already — count towards the same category. Is the solution to break it down even further? Do we need eight quads? I don’t have the answer, but beating higher ranked teams should probably count for more than beating lower ranked teams. With the Quad system, they’re all valued the same if they’re in the same quad range based on home, away, or neutral site.
What’s a bad loss in the Quad system?
A good rule of thumb in the age of the NET: avoid Quad-3 and Quad-4 losses at all costs. Those are the losses that will get tied to your NCAA Tournament resume like bricks, and you don’t want the tournament committee pointing out those gaudy losses come March.
Last season, the eight Big Ten teams that made the NCAA Tournament had a combined one Quad-3 loss and zero Quad-4 losses. Good teams don’t lose games they are expected to win, and last year’s eight B1G teams in the tournament didn’t. Ohio State is 7-0 this season against Quad-3 and Quad-4 teams, so they’ve at least won the games they’re expected to win.
Where’s Ohio State in the NET?
As of Monday morning, Ohio State was No. 43 in the NET rankings — the 10th-highest Big Ten team. The Buckeyes initially debuted at No. 63 back on November 30. As stated above, last year no Big Ten team ranked lower than No. 30 made the NCAA Tournament.
Last season, Ohio State finished the year No. 39 in the NET. Ultimately, it was their 17-15 record — a high number of losses for an NCAA Tournament bubble team — that kept them out, more so than their NET ranking. Later on Selection Sunday, the tournament committee revealed that Ohio State was one of the first four teams left out of the NCAA Tournament.
