Not sure why you’d make such a douchey comment. I was simply pointing out obvious flaws in it. If you can’t see the nonsense in some of the rankings, then that’s fine. I’m not sure why you would make it personal. Maybe you’re just an A hole.
Who did you play? Who did you beat? Did you challenge yourself? Did you beat a bunch of cupcakes and have an inflated record? That’s the way it always was. Then came the RPI, which at least was a better system but still overvalued mid majors without marquee wins.
Now the measure of a good team is beating the living hell out of over matched cupcakes. To the point where your 11th 12th 13th men and walk ons don’t even play anymore and you humiliate teams by running up the score. Without even a win against a power 5 team. Yeah, that’s a great system.
The NET might’ve fooled you into believing the Mountain West had 4 worthy tournament teams last year, plus the last one out, but not me.
1. NCAA teams are still selected based on who you played and who you beat so from a Syracuse perspective I don't get worried about NET outliers, especially early in the season when a few outliwer games skew things.
Your individual NET will not be the reason you get in or get out (one could argue there a few exceptions the last 7 years of NET). Its the same as individual RPI - it was never the reason teams got in, or got out. We have got into the NCAA with both a poor NET and poor RPI since our "bubble" era started in 2015, because of the quality of our wins.
It came down to the quality of wins / how many you get / avoiding bad losses.
2. The NET is more skewed early. There is always an incentive to run up the score, which is problematic (it helps the conference more than you), but those outliers even out more as the season goes on, although they don't fully go away eithe.
3. Do teams challenge themselves less under the new system? It depends .. yes (see b) and no (see a)
a) The play just as many Q1/Q2 games as the did in the past. So in that regard they challenge themselves with tough games just as much, it might even be a bit more.
b) Under RPI, P5 would try to target teams in that Q3 range, or top half of Q4. Teams in that 125-200 range. That is because that was how you gamed the RPI -- or avoided getting destroyed by it Playing sub 300 teams, or even worse the bottom 10% at 330 or worse would crush your RPI.
Under NET you target those sub 300 teams.
Either way you were just targeting teams that are fairly sure wins -- one that would help the RPI the most or one that would help NET the most. So you just have to 2 buckets of games that were
I would prefer seeing teams play teams in the 125-200 and avoid the Miss Valley St's and Delaware St's, who had a much harder time finding buy games at the end of the RPI era. To me the biggest flaw in the NET is the scheduling compared to the RPI, but I still think NET might spit out numbers in the end. Its close though. Either way they are still relatively easy win games that shouldn't impact whether you get in or not.
4. I still think the best teams that come out of NET at the end of the year (Top 10) are going to be best teams. You might be able to get your NET up from 40 to 30 by beating the hell out of teams, which is a flaw, its not going to get the absolute best too wrong.
5. As for the MWC, interestingly they did better under RPI last year than NET based on my scanning of Warren Nolan. Under RPI they probably get 4 teams in as well last ear, As I said before understanding the MWC is a little tricky, and I can't stay I have fully grasped it.
6. As I said last year my one solution for a better ranking system, to at least encourage better scheduling is the following:
Let's change NET to
a) 50 % of current NET
b) 50% of former RPI
The two systems have strengths and obvious weaknesses. But those weaknesses offset each other -- and they are both managed very differently in terms of scheduling. Which is my they are good complements of each other if you want to combine them,
