Manipulating the NET

[FrancoPizza]

The easiest adjustment to make with the NET is to weight the margin of victory or defeat on a logarithmic scale. After, say, the first 10 points, the impact starts to decay. This way, as an example, a 30-point win still carries weight, but is only slightly more impactful than a 10 point win. Would make it a lot harder to game the system. The simpler alternative is to cap the margin at a fixed # so that any value greater than, say, 10 points doesn't factor in.

Despite how it affects us THIS year, I am trying to be objective when I say that margins DO matter. It is a measure of how a team performs and it SHOULD be factored in to some degree.

 

[jncuse]

Hopefully we can get back to being one of the programs regularly top 25 and assist Duke UNC and UVA in anchoring the conference. All 3 have had their own struggles with Miami and FSU having short cycles of being at/near the top. Really it’s the Ville and SU with the brand and support program wise to make a solid top 5 year in year out and thus without that we are stuck with Clemson, Pitt and Wake trying to fit that role when they belong as the bubble teams that get in because of the top 5 not the wins you point to as quality wins.

The positive is that it was not as quite as bad in 2024 vs 2023 and 2022 (a fair bit better).

It's across all groups - the elite, the middle, and probably biggest at the bottom. It hurts when programs that have historically been consistent tourney level (more often than not) struggle like Notre Dame, Louisville, Florida St and ourselves to a degree.

 

[pwong]

So how much you win by is performance? That’s a slippery slope and his argument is missing the point.

I think Sweeneys point is that you should be rewarded for beating the spread (predictive metric).

Edit: i guess winning margin vs team rankings is factored into the NET

 

[cuseattle]

Stop wasting time and get the ACC Tournament projections thread started.

With colors, please.

 

[Orangefan1]

The NET has to be the dumbest thing in College basketball

 

[shandeezy7]

The NET somehow went from capping margin of victory at 10 points to deciding that margin of victory is the most important factor of all of them.

 

[CardiacCuse]

one crazy aspect of the current rankings is that only 17 of the top 100 teams in NET have more Ws than Ls in quad 1


not sure how that is even possible

since such few teams do well in quad 1 games...kinda makes the whole quad system meaningless to me

furthermore, makes me even more strongly dislike the idea that my team has a poor NET ranking off of quad 1 performances...(considering almost no one does)

 

[jncuse]

The NET somehow went from capping margin of victory at 10 points to deciding that margin of victory is the most important factor of all of them.

I will take a positive out of this. Part of the reason the Villanova win boosted their NET so much was because of a) margin and b) the NET gives a nice extra boost to road wins.

Obviously we can't count on margin, but if we win the next 2 road games (even by small margins) we will get a very healthy boost in NET, so we would fall on the edges of the top 70.

I hope I can be proven right or wrong.

 

[pwong]

Lunardi weighs in

 

[OrlandoCuse]

I stopped trusting the NET when I realized that Rebounding numbers matter significantly and Strength of Schedule doesn’t matter at all. Pretty stupid ratings system. It’s also going to keep us out of the NCAAt this year.

 

[jncuse]

I stopped trusting the NET when I realized that Rebounding numbers matter significantly and Strength of Schedule doesn’t matter at all. Pretty stupid ratings system. It’s also going to keep us out of the NCAAt this year.

If we lose to Clemson, NET is not really the factor keeping us out of the tournament. Let's hope we win to see what happens. At that point it could hold us back.

I have seen you state this rebounding items a number of times and I think you are misinterpreting it

When they say offensive rebounds is part of the efficiency calculation all it means is that offensive rebounds (and turnovers and a few other items) are part of the calculation of # of possessions.

I'll give you the following example to demonstrate my point

1. Team A has the ball 5 times -- attempts 8 shots as it had 3 offensive rebounds. It shoots 4/8 (50%), gets 8 points, but still had just 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 160/100 possessions.

2. Team B has the ball 5 times - attempts 5 shots and gets 0 offensive rebounds. It shoots 3/5 (60%), score 6 points and has 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 120/100 possessions.

Despite Team B shooting the ball better than Team A, Team A is deemed to have better efficiency. Which makes sense -- it scored more in its 5 possessions.

You have to factor in offensive rebounds, # of turnovers, free throws to accurately calculate the # of possessions a team had. At the end of a game each team will have the same # of possessions (or within one).

 

[jncuse]

Lunardi weighs in

I'll give you a quick stat -- in 66 games against Q4 teams, the B12 was 39-23 against the spread (with 4 pushes) and there were many more massive covers than shortfalls. In fact the 6 teams highest in the B12 standing went 22-4 against the spread. (I started an an analysis in the gambling thread the other day - see link below) That's not a small sample to do really well in - its not only 5 games.

The easiest way, and the traditional way for a conference to benefit from NET or RPI, has simply been to play well out of conference as a group in terms of win and losses (obviously with schedule consideration). The B12 played really well in Q1 and Q2 games last year OOC, and avoided bad losses and they got the tourney seeding and selection love they earned. ACC failed in that regard in 2022, 2023 (both miserably) and 2024 (although to a lesser extent). It's hard to manipulate NET when you only win 73% of your Q3 games like the ACC did this year.

That being said something is clearly happening in the B12 this year. Their Q1+Q2 record as compared the SEC, ACC, MWC (as I had calculated earlier) did not stand out as much better-- like it did last year. They did excel in Q3 games (winning 96% of 26 games). But something had to happen for them to be doing so well in NET.

And its in those Q4 games where they are performing extremely well over a not so small sample of 66 games. Is it manipulation or simply being better in those Q4 games? Hard to tell.

But I can tell you there is one type of game that is easiest for a team to control its narrative margin wise -- especially good teams that find a way to go 22-4 in those games.

Sports Gambling Thread

3-1 last night (Group 1: 28-14, Group 2: 32-14) Plays for Tonight Illinois at Michigan (+3) Vermont at Binghamton (+7) Seattle at Stone Cold Steve Austin (-6) St Thomas at South Dakota (+6) Gonzaga at Pepperdine (+12.5) Regarding the top 25, the "Old-School" auto bet (Top 25 at home...

syracusefan.com

 

[Irt4su]

So what I gather from this is that the walk ons should never play whether it’s a blowout win or loss. Got it.

 

[Orangezoo]

The NET somehow went from capping margin of victory at 10 points to deciding that margin of victory is the most important factor of all of them.

it’s actually pretty simple. By using margin of victory as a weighted variable that’s capped, it reduced the weighting of the efficiency metrics that use MOV and thus even with that redundancy, kept the MOV impact somewhat controlled. Now since they removed the MOV as a stand alone variable the efficiency metrics have a higher weight and thus you see these impacts play out more.

In order for this to balance out they have to nerf some of the efficiency weighting in favor of wins and losses , road record etc.

Another reason for this is teams with more losses see a jump too given this is a pretty big spike in MOV and for efficiency. If we beat the Ville and win by 20 or more we can jump 5 spots or more most likely especially when our efficiency numbers would get a bigger boost than some others would. As JN pointed out as well road and higher margin victories combined get an even bigger boost.

 

[Orangefan1]

Lunardi weighs in

The NET is broken it’s absolutely a broken piece of garbage system

 

[STEVEHOLT]

The easiest adjustment to make with the NET is to weight the margin of victory or defeat on a logarithmic scale. After, say, the first 10 points, the impact starts to decay. This way, as an example, a 30-point win still carries weight, but is only slightly more impactful than a 10 point win. Would make it a lot harder to game the system. The simpler alternative is to cap the margin at a fixed # so that any value greater than, say, 10 points doesn't factor in.

Despite how it affects us THIS year, I am trying to be objective when I say that margins DO matter. It is a measure of how a team performs and it SHOULD be factored in to some degree.

Sure , but if you beat a bunch of swac teams by 30 what does that mean?

 

[STEVEHOLT]

 

[Orangezoo]

The NET is broken it’s absolutely a broken piece of garbage system

Joe doesn’t want people messing with the tool that lets him make tons of money working 30 mins a day

 

[690West]

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Holy shlit! Xavier is below .500

 

[storange]

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Wow , that is damning stuff. 100% proof that the system is badly flawed, and should be just one of many indicators.

 

[Cusefan0307]

Lunardi weighs in

I was looking at some of those Big12 teams and a few of their resumes are awfully similar to our 2007 team that was penalized for scheduling a week OOC. Texas and Oklahoma specifically.

 

[Marsh01]

problem with the NET is you only get .6 credit for a home win where you get 1.4 for a road win. Too skewed

 

[Orangezoo]

Holy shlit! Xavier is below .500

Ok here is some correlation on MOV for us and some things to show if we had blown out more teams and stayed closer we might be in the 40s with the same record and same wins and losses-

Our total MOV is a net of zero because of the bad road losses and playing non cupcakes outside a couple teams plus you don’t count Chaminade in the formula.

VTs total net MOV is 134
Maryland is 142
UCF is 143
Oregon is 125
NCSU is 104
UW is 91
Xavier is 62

Wins and losses, road wins and beating the expected outcomes certainly must play their role as other variables but just looking at this- total MOV is playing a massive role here.

If road wins truly weighted heavily then VT should be much further down in the Net.

I put together a quick spreadsheet so happy to run the numbers on any other teams anyone is curious of

Lastly let’s look at Wake. They have a slightly better resume than us in terms of the wins they have but the same record in terms of the net. We have essentially the same road/neutral record. Their net MOV is 261- they are 27 in the net. Again it’s pretty clear how much weight is being carried by MOV and that’s the formula. Mix in as many garbage non conf with some good games and then conference play and hit 18-22 wins. This avoids bad losses, preserves MOV and you just have to win enough of the q1/q2 games to get over the hump. Wake by the way is 6-10 in q1/q2 games with 1 quad 1 win which is the win over Duke.

 

[ar inj]

I'll give you the following example to demonstrate my point

1. Team A has the ball 5 times -- attempts 8 shots as it had 3 offensive rebounds. It shoots 4/8 (50%), gets 8 points, but still had just 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 160/100 possessions.

2. Team B has the ball 5 times - attempts 5 shots and gets 0 offensive rebounds. It shoots 3/5 (60%), score 6 points and has 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 120/100 possessions.

Despite Team B shooting the ball better than Team A, Team A is deemed to have better efficiency.

No, no, no. Once a team shoots the ball they no longer have possession. In order to take another shot they need to gain possession. Kudos to them for getting the rebound and another opportunity to score, I.e., another possession, but that means they had eight possessions not five. Their efficiency should be 100/100.

If NET works as you have explained then SU is punished for not being a good (a bad) rebounding team.

PS I like, appreciate, understand, and agree w/ most of your posts on this and related topics. My complaint is with the NET, not you. Keep up the great posts.

 

[upperdeck]

If we lose to Clemson, NET is not really the factor keeping us out of the tournament. Let's hope we win to see what happens. At that point it could hold us back.

I have seen you state this rebounding items a number of times and I think you are misinterpreting it

When they say offensive rebounds is part of the efficiency calculation all it means is that offensive rebounds (and turnovers and a few other items) are part of the calculation of # of possessions.

I'll give you the following example to demonstrate my point

1. Team A has the ball 5 times -- attempts 8 shots as it had 3 offensive rebounds. It shoots 4/8 (50%), gets 8 points, but still had just 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 160/100 possessions.

2. Team B has the ball 5 times - attempts 5 shots and gets 0 offensive rebounds. It shoots 3/5 (60%), score 6 points and has 5 possessions. It has an offensive efficiency of 120/100 possessions.

Despite Team B shooting the ball better than Team A, Team A is deemed to have better efficiency. Which makes sense -- it scored more in its 5 possessions.

You have to factor in offensive rebounds, # of turnovers, free throws to accurately calculate the # of possessions a team had. At the end of a game each team will have the same # of possessions (or within one).

not true though.. nothing says you have to have the same number of possessions within1.. it just tends to work out that way.

You have the ball you get an intentional/flagrant foul you get shots and the ball. is that one possession or 2?

Or you score and the other team doesnt inbound the ball, thats not a possession. or you cause a tie up and the other team fails to get it in, thats not a possession.

In theory a team could have zero possessions in a game and in some HS games it is skewed by 10+