NET Rankings...

[OttoinGrotto]

We truly are in the era of nerds.

 

[Niastri]

I don't want to have this devolve into a pie fight and stay on topic, so this is what I'll say:

I think most rational people (including me) had the hope that we would make the tourney (nothing more, nothing less). But were very cautious about this because of all the mid major transfers.

I think others thought we would be better (ie - carlos would be a really good PG, etc).

Upon seeing the team off the bat, I just let that hope go.

Anyway, point being, the NET ranking for us and the conference basically dropped an anvil on any last irrational hope I had for making the tournament, albeit that hope being very tiny.

We still play a lot of good teams that can give us quality wins.

We have an excellent raw talent in Freeman, who is getting better every game.

We have veterans who have so far played below expectations, that can potentially turn it around.

We have a very poorly performing starter, who is a major candidate for replacement, and therefore a major upgrade to the lineup.

A lot of things can go right for us, in our quality of play.

Even if we lose to Tennessee by ten, we probably go up in the NET.

We also have four other very winnable games in the OOC before conference play.

It hasn't started well, but we have a lot of games to play, and a roster that can improve dramatically in time to get us into the tournament.

 

[MikeSU02]

We truly are in the era of nerds.

We've been in it for a while, it's just that Syracuse is very late to exploiting it.

 

[kingtidge]

==


Yeah, this is exactly it. I don't fully agree with NET, but it's what it is. And we're toast.

It's really sad that we haven't played a game in December and we're already toast.

 

[jncuse]

Good points. We probably lose one of those 150-240 games, perhaps two.

Re: #3, I would guess that the consolidation of the other conferences has a lot to do with the scheduling trends; You can load up your non-con with the true dregs of CBB and "rig the NET" IF your conference is very strong. It's less viable when your conference is as mediocre as the ACC has been since 2020.

I'll step back a bit to try to answer this one.
1) Under the RPI, teams would avoid projected sub 300 teams like the plague. Teams tried to schedule team ranked 130-200 at home as the sweet spot, if I remember correctly. They were going to win those games either way. The RPI was based on your W/L%, multiplied by the win% of your opponents and their opponents. Margin was irrelevant. So it was much better to schedule against better teams that you knew you would beat, as they had better win%.

2) So now we moved to NET and margin. And all of a sudden the sub 300 games become quite in vogue again -- 31% of games so far are between 261-364.

But it seems one league is particularly effective in those games - the B12. The B12 doesn't do better margin wise or win% wise against better teams (as compared to their peers). But against bad teams they do way better.

Here is my theory on why better teams want to play sub 300 teams so much now. The reason "Margins" with those games historically stayed someone in control, is that teams historically laid off the dogs earlier than they do now. You get to a lead of 25 points, your not pushing much harder -- playing depth players. In the past what's the incentive to play your guys in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

Well now you have the incentive to push deeper into the game with your starters. Ask everyone to play a bit harder. Pushing strategies deeper into the game. And based on the numbers it seems like the B12 does it better than others. This is where I use the term "you can control the narrative" easier.

If you are playing a #150 team, its much harder to control the narrative margin wise.

 

[jncuse]

I agree we have done nothing to show much. But I also don't know that not beating bad teams in games 1-3 really means much to how you might be by year end. Playing Texas and TT tough meant more but no reward their either.

I mean if we beat those bad teams by 40 and still lost to the 2 good teams in decent games does that make us any better a team?

So your question basically is -- Would you feel better about our team moving forward if we won our 4 cupcake games by a total of 100 points instead of 15 points? The answer is 100% absolutely -- I would feel far better about this team moving forward this year if we hadn't fought for our lives against Lemoyne, Colgate and Youngstown. I'm not sure there is a cogent argument otherwise - that being said I would be interested in hearing it.

It wouldn't impact our tournament resume in any way so in that regard you are correct -- we avoided the bad loss which is all that matters for selection in terms of Q4 games. But fighting for our lives in all our cupcake games still is an indicator, not an absolute one, of who we could be.

 

[upperdeck]

So your question basically is -- Would you feel better about our team moving forward if we won our 4 cupcake games by a total of 100 points instead of 15 points? The answer is 100% absolutely -- I would feel far better about this team. I'm not sure there is a cogent argument otherwise.

It wouldn't impact our tournament resume in any way so in that regard you are correct -- we avoided the bad loss which is all that matters for selection. But the fact that we are fighting for our lives in those games, does give a pretty decent indicator of what is to come... but its not 100% correlated or absolute.

Just by eyeball though they played much better vs the Texas teams than they did out of the gate. Lets hope they make another improvement in Dec. Tenn could be better so it doesnt even matter but lets see what happens the other games.

 

[Niastri]

I'll step back a bit to try to answer this one.
1) Under the RPI, teams would avoid projected sub 300 teams like the plague. Teams tried to schedule team ranked 130-200 at home as the sweet spot, if I remember correctly. They were going to win those games either way. The RPI was based on your W/L%, multiplied by the win% of your opponents and their opponents. Margin was irrelevant. So it was much better to schedule against better teams that you knew you would beat, as they had better win%.

2) So now we moved to NET and margin. And all of a sudden the sub 300 games become quite in vogue again -- 31% of games so far are between 261-364.

But it seems one league is particularly effective in those games - the B12. The B12 doesn't do better margin wise or win% wise against better teams (as compared to their peers). But against bad teams they do way better.

Here is my theory on why better teams want to play sub 300 teams so much now. The reason "Margins" with those games historically stayed someone in control, is that teams historically laid off the dogs earlier than they do now. You get to a lead of 25 points, your not pushing much harder -- playing depth players. In the past what's the incentive to play your guys in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

Well now you have the incentive to push deeper into the game with your starters. Ask everyone to play a bit harder. Pushing strategies deeper into the game. And based on the numbers it seems like the B12 does it better than others. This is where I use the term "you can control the narrative" easier.

If you are playing a #150 team, its much harder to control the narrative margin wise.

A simple solution, (which would also encourage sportsmanship, btw) would be to cap the maximum margin of victory counted by NET at, say, 20. Winning by 22 and 42 are equally valuable to your ranking, so crushing bad teams isn't as relevant.

 

[jncuse]

Just by eyeball though they played much better vs the Texas teams than they did out of the gate. Lets hope they make another improvement in Dec. Tenn could be better so it doesnt even matter but lets see what happens the other games.

I agree that were was certainly some progress in games 4 and 5. and in game 6 too.

If you compare games 4-6, versus games 1-3, it was a lot better. That being said our game 4-6 is still a bit underwhelming. But yes it was progress. Lets hope it continues.

 

[MikeSU02]

It's really sad that we haven't played a game in December and we're already toast.

Hey, you never know. Maybe we beat Tenny tomorrow and start a run.

 

[Sbucketball]

We still play a lot of good teams that can give us quality wins.

We have an excellent raw talent in Freeman, who is getting better every game.

We have veterans who have so far played below expectations, that can potentially turn it around.

We have a very poorly performing starter, who is a major candidate for replacement, and therefore a major upgrade to the lineup.

A lot of things can go right for us, in our quality of play.

Even if we lose to Tennessee by ten, we probably go up in the NET.

We also have four other very winnable games in the OOC before conference play.

It hasn't started well, but we have a lot of games to play, and a roster that can improve dramatically in time to get us into the tournament.

When you're 177 in December, you need more than quality wins. Beating #91 NC State isn't going to do it, neither is beating 50 or 60, although we need to do all that too. We need to beat Tenn, Duke and UNC or at least 2 of 3, and then beat the solid teams too. But if we beat a good amount of those quality teams and lose to those big time teams, we're on the outside looking in, given how the ACC looks again. It feels like a lifetime since we haven't started in a hole and could just count on quality wins and no slip ups.

 

[jncuse]

A simple solution, (which would also encourage sportsmanship, btw) would be to cap the maximum margin of victory counted by NET at, say, 20. Winning by 22 and 42 are equally valuable to your ranking, so crushing bad teams isn't as relevant.

If there is a system that would work that would cap margins it would be great.

Perhaps your proposal would work. Here's the one problem I could see, If you are playing team #350 being credited with a win capped at 20 isn't very good. You will be punished vs beating team #240 by 20. Perhaps there is some sort of sliding scale that could work that could compensate for that that still caps wins based on the # you are facing.

 

[Cusefan0307]

I said before the season we needed to roll our cupcakes to make the tournament. Instead we were in games down to the wire against all 3 of our sub 180KP neighbors.

 

[M2MPrinciples]

I'll step back a bit to try to answer this one.
1) Under the RPI, teams would avoid projected sub 300 teams like the plague. Teams tried to schedule team ranked 130-200 at home as the sweet spot, if I remember correctly. They were going to win those games either way. The RPI was based on your W/L%, multiplied by the win% of your opponents and their opponents. Margin was irrelevant. So it was much better to schedule against better teams that you knew you would beat, as they had better win%.

2) So now we moved to NET and margin. And all of a sudden the sub 300 games become quite in vogue again -- 31% of games so far are between 261-364.

But it seems one league is particularly effective in those games - the B12. The B12 doesn't do better margin wise or win% wise against better teams (as compared to their peers). But against bad teams they do way better.

Here is my theory on why better teams want to play sub 300 teams so much now. The reason "Margins" with those games historically stayed someone in control, is that teams historically laid off the dogs earlier than they do now. You get to a lead of 25 points, your not pushing much harder -- playing depth players. In the past what's the incentive to play your guys in the last 10 or 15 minutes.

Well now you have the incentive to push deeper into the game with your starters. Ask everyone to play a bit harder. Pushing strategies deeper into the game. And based on the numbers it seems like the B12 does it better than others. This is where I use the term "you can control the narrative" easier.

If you are playing a #150 team, its much harder to control the narrative margin wise.

Maybe I'm misremembering, but I don't recall that many teams ducking those sub-300s in the RPI era. They were (and still are) needed to get everyone reps and build confidence, so in pretty high demand. What I do know happened is that savvy programs, especially at the top, realized they could do that just as effectively against that middle third of programs, in essence midmajors and low-majors who were picked to finish at or near the top of their conferences, but still needed the money. They could do all those things while mitigating the RPI hit.

Those power conference teams would have someone on staff (either an assistant, DOBO or administrator) find those schools and negotiate deals to bring them to campus. One or two might turn out to be worse than you thought when you scheduled them, but on the whole it was a good strategy.

With free transfers, the rosters are much less predictable, so like I mentioned it's more challenging to work in that framework, but not impossible.

 

[Niastri]

Hey, you never know. Maybe we beat Tenny tomorrow and start a run.

Beating Tennessee changes the whole conversation, no doubt.

Get ready for a Chris Bell 30-spot.

 

[jncuse]

The NCAA announced this summer that they would also be tracking two Barttorvik stats, along with KP. The one Barttorvik ranking "Wins above Bubble" was quality of record and either didn't include margin or heavily diminshed it. It was actually quite intriguing as a ranking tool.

A margin based system like KP and NET is probably the best way to fairly rank teams #100-#350, or teams that are not in top conferences (like CUSA for example). But the question has to be asked -- do we need a system that best ranks the bottom 250 of the country when none of them are going to make the tourney as at larges, and wins against those teams are not Q1 or Q2, and are largely deemed meaningless? Or do we want a system that better measures the top 100 schools and the quality of their record, and does a crappy job with those in the bottom ha;?

The Barttorvik stat that was proposed "Wins Above Bubble", probably does a bad job ranking the worst 200 teams or so in the country. But it probably does a better job ranking the top 100, especially since its a W/L metric. Perhaps that is the way to go.

None of it would really help Syracuse so far either way, but in larger picture for all teams.

 

[Sbucketball]

The NCAA announced this summer that they would also be tracking two Barttorvik stats, along with KP. The one Barttorvik ranking "Wins above Bubble" was quality of record and either didn't include margin or heavily diminshed it. It was actually quite intriguing as a ranking tool.

A margin based system like KP and NET is probably the best way to fairly rank teams #100-#350, or teams that are not in top conferences (like CUSA for example). But the question has to be asked -- do we need a system that best ranks the bottom 250 of the country when none of them are going to make the tourney as at larges, and wins against those teams are not Q1 or Q2, and are largely deemed meaningless? Or do we want a system that better measures the top 100 schools and the quality of their record?

The Barttorvik stat that was proposed "Wins Above Bubble", probably does a bad job ranking the worst 200 teams or so in the country. But it probably does a better job ranking the top 100. Perhaps that is the way to go.

None of it would really help Syracuse so far either way, but in larger picture.

I'd rather have an accurate Top 100 than an accurate Bottom 250.

 

[jncuse]

We truly are in the era of nerds.

This nerd will see you in hell.

 

[jncuse]

I wouldn't be surprised at this point if the SEC. B10 and B12 get a total of 30 teams in the NCAA tournament. The BE is down, the ACC is down, the MWC is down, and the PAC-12 no longer exists.

30 to the Big 3 above. (3 champs, and 27 at larges)
28 conference champs
10 at larges for the Following (ACC, BE, MWC, WCC, maybe one for the A-10, one for the AAC)

 

[OttoinGrotto]

This nerd will see you in hell.

Take a number.

 

[cardiac]

We are equally as far from the Top 25 as we are from last place...

 

[UpstateSM]

The ACC has major issues. Becoming clear as day that $$$ is playing a bigger role more every year. Which at this point you just throw your arms up. An unstructured jr NBA.

I know I’m a broken record but cbb is just about ruined. CFB still is a money game and is tainted too but there is something still there to me albeit I don’t know for how long.

I'm confident that it'll get much better once players are on multi-year agreements. The portal and NIL (more so with it being in-house, IMO) will help with "parity" and talent distribution once that is the case. I think. Of course a huge chance that those in power will royally mess it up, though.

Football splitting so leagues could go back to making sense wouldn't hurt either.

 

[Blanko97]

BPI seems to like syracuse quite a bit more than NET (#68). I assume that is because of the predictive nature of the model? Anyway, we should be calling for the NCAA to take that more seriously!

 

[DomeHolmes]

There is a number of things I agree with this post (we both agree with the NET issues and the cupcake impact), a few I don't.

The biggest point of disagreement I have is the assumption you make about a 13-7 record in the ACC being enough. Our biggest obstacle isn't Individual NET which theoretically can always be overcome by the quality of your record and quality of wins, especially since we thankfully avoided those bad losses -- the biggest obstacle is that our conference mates really stink NET wise (and that won't change drastically before conference play). And that will limit our quality wins opportunities and make it harder to miss those Q3 bombs along the way -- and that more than anything is what we need.

I certainly agree with most of your points about the NET
1) In my other tracking thread, I noted that about 50% of team's games across all conferences are Q4 games. So when a team or conference as a whole is measured for OOC play, half the possessions are against garbage teams. So it's very important they dominate those games.
Which is the reality, but its also very flawed.

Last year I proposed NET being calculated as half the current NET way / and half the RPI. I think it help some of the BS, because the flaws of each sort of hedge each other.

2) UConn's NET is boosted by high margin victories (its 5 wins are by an average of 41 points). Its certainly not the 39th best team-- it has a meaningless tournament resume as now. Same as us basically - with nothing good, and nothing that bad. I I'm sure that 41 point margin will help there season ending NET a fair but, but they will need to get quality just like us, and like us its not going to be that easy in the BE. Its way down like the ACC.

In terms of disagreement
1) I'll disagree on the MWC gaming the system via Q4 margin. That's not how they did it - its a little more complex for them. The B12 on the other hand...The B12 they have found a way to pound teams better than their peers in 2023 and 2024, and its certainly taking advantage of the bottom level Q4 teams.

2) I'm not sure I disagree with us that much at #177. We were in battles with some really bad teams. As a team, we are mediocre, that sometimes don't have the ability to really game anything.

On your point about maintain west. They had almost no big wins OOC as a conference. They barely even played any big games because they understood blowout wins vs bad teams are more valuable than close losses to good teams In the NET. They scheduled and went all out to beat bad teams by as much as possible. That raised the conference NET so high they had numerous quad 1 opportunities in conference. It becomes a self fulfilling prophecy that you must be good because of your quad one wins. Then they sucked in the tournament as was expected. Every year recently the ACC has out performed their “bad conference reputation”


BTW I said might be enough. No assumption there, we certainly could get left out

 

[DomeHolmes]

BPI seems to like syracuse quite a bit more than NET (#68). I assume that is because of the predictive nature of the model? Anyway, we should be calling for the NCAA to take that more seriously!

Odd Isn’t it? That shows ONE of the metrics is severely flawed. Any one who thinks we are really #177 ”because the NET says so“ is undervaluing our team. I’m not predicting we make the tournament but we are not #177 or close. (If healthy) .

if BPI was the key metric, every one here would be talking about us being on the bubble now, not being “toast”. BPI is a factor too. Just not as big.

as I said before, even if we beat Texas and Tennessee we would still be FAR behind Yukon at 39, which is a joke based on 3 unranked losses an no good wins. NET sucks but we unfortunately have to live with it.

another Yukon note. They have stretch of Baylor, Texas, Zags and Xavier. If they go 1-3, they will need 14-15 Big east wins to get in no matter how badly they beat their “cupcakes”. Big east is farther down than ACC.