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RUTS is the key
- treesap32
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RUTS is the key
Last night Florida Atlantic University beat a Quad 3 team, Florida Gulf Coast at home. You would think this wouldn't affect their NET ranking very much, but you would be wrong.
It moved them from 21st all the way up to 11th in the NET. Passing teams like Duke, Texas, Kansas, Gonzaga, and yes, Utah State in the process.
How does this happen? 1 reason. They Ran Up The Score (RUTS) on their mediocre opponent. They were favored to beat Florida Gulf Coast by 7 points, but they ended up blowing them out by 32 points.
If coaches understand this mechanism, it would give much more incentive to keep your starters in the game when you are up by 20+ points in the second half. Running up the score is the key to the NET.
It moved them from 21st all the way up to 11th in the NET. Passing teams like Duke, Texas, Kansas, Gonzaga, and yes, Utah State in the process.
How does this happen? 1 reason. They Ran Up The Score (RUTS) on their mediocre opponent. They were favored to beat Florida Gulf Coast by 7 points, but they ended up blowing them out by 32 points.
If coaches understand this mechanism, it would give much more incentive to keep your starters in the game when you are up by 20+ points in the second half. Running up the score is the key to the NET.
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Re: RUTS is the key
I came to the same conclusion this morning. I wonder how much the close Dixie game hurt us…
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Re: RUTS is the key
Whatever we lost from the close Utah Tech game we gained back by winning by a such a huge margin against San Fran.flying_scotsman2.0 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:06 pmI came to the same conclusion this morning. I wonder how much the close Dixie game hurt us…
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Re: RUTS is the key
I thought that winning by 10 points was the key. A win of more than 10 points = a 10 point win. Overtime wins = 1 point win. Obviously, the closer you are to 10 points win the better for your ranking. On the opposite side, you don't want to lose bad 10 points or more.
I don't remember where I read this but I thought it was one of the few things we did know about the NET ranking.
I don't remember where I read this but I thought it was one of the few things we did know about the NET ranking.
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Re: RUTS is the key
There are a few parts to the formula here and one of them is Margin of Victory. That is capped at 10 so anything more than 10 is capped in that area. But that isn't the whole story. RUTS improves your offensive efficiency rankings which is also a part of the formula.Blitz79 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:39 pmI thought that winning by 10 points was the key. A win of more than 10 points = a 10 point win. Overtime wins = 1 point win. Obviously, the closer you are to 10 points win the better for your ranking. On the opposite side, you don't want to lose bad 10 points or more.
I don't remember where I read this but I thought it was one of the few things we did know about the NET ranking.
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Re: RUTS is the key
That was when NET was originally released. They did consider scoring margin and capped it at 10. That's no longer the case. They made drastic changes in 2020 and no longer consider winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage, nor scoring margin. Here's a quote from the NCAA site:ProvoAggie wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:54 pmThere are a few parts to the formula here and one of them is Margin of Victory. That is capped at 10 so anything more than 10 is capped in that area. But that isn't the whole story. RUTS improves your offensive efficiency rankings which is also a part of the formula.Blitz79 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:39 pmI thought that winning by 10 points was the key. A win of more than 10 points = a 10 point win. Overtime wins = 1 point win. Obviously, the closer you are to 10 points win the better for your ranking. On the opposite side, you don't want to lose bad 10 points or more.
I don't remember where I read this but I thought it was one of the few things we did know about the NET ranking.
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-me ... inal%20NET.With the changes announced in May 2020, the NET will no longer use winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin. The change was made after the committee consulted with Google Cloud Professional Services, which worked with the NCAA to develop the original NET.
“When we adopted the NET in 2018, we had reviewed several seasons worth of data and we insisted that we would continue to evaluate the metric,” said Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball. “We’ve been very satisfied with its performance thus far, but it became evident after two seasons of use that this change would be an improvement. While we will continue to monitor the metric, I don’t anticipate any additional adjustments for several years. We believe this change will result in more precision throughout the season and will be easier for our membership and the public to understand."
The updated NET is consistent with the women’s basketball NET, which was revealed after the Division I Women’s Basketball Committee worked with a team from Google Cloud to evaluate women’s basketball statistical data for a 10-year period.
In addition, the overall and non-conference strength of schedule has been modernized to reflect a truer measure for how hard it is to defeat opponents. The strength of schedule is based on rating every game on a team's schedule for how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win. It considers opponent strength and site of each game, assigning each game a difficulty score. Aggregating these across all games results in an overall expected win percentage versus a team's schedule, which can be ranked to get a better measure of the strength of schedule.
It's a mystery exactly what they are assessing, but it's clear they are factoring in offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Therefore, blowing out your opponents is going to really help you. It's very clearly evidenced in the standings and movement within them.
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Re: RUTS is the key
The Utes home blowout win of Jacksonville State at home launched them up in the NET from 29 to 18. I think you are on to something. Running up the Score (RUTS) is key.
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Re: RUTS is the key
This part is really interesting. The NET SOS metric sounds very similar to what ESPN's BPI uses. That means USU's NET SOS really does rank 314 since BPI has the Aggies at 293. There was some speculation in another thread that the SOS number could be a mistake, but now I don't think so. That leaves me with two questions:treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIn addition, the overall and non-conference strength of schedule has been modernized to reflect a truer measure for how hard it is to defeat opponents. The strength of schedule is based on rating every game on a team's schedule for how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win. It considers opponent strength and site of each game, assigning each game a difficulty score. Aggregating these across all games results in an overall expected win percentage versus a team's schedule, which can be ranked to get a better measure of the strength of schedule.
1. How much does NET SOS matter if USU is ranked 16 overall despite being 314 in SOS?
2. Why is USU such an outlier in terms of Avg Opp NET Rank (31) vs NET SOS (314)?
My best guess is that USU's lack of road games explains the bizarrely low SOS number. Notre Dame has the next largest gap between Avg Opp NET Rank (136) and NET SOS (349). They have yet to play a road game.
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Re: RUTS is the key
This is no longer true. They removed margin of victory as a component in the NET rankings prior to the 2020-2021 season.ProvoAggie wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:54 pmThere are a few parts to the formula here and one of them is Margin of Victory. That is capped at 10 so anything more than 10 is capped in that area. But that isn't the whole story. RUTS improves your offensive efficiency rankings which is also a part of the formula.Blitz79 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 12:39 pmI thought that winning by 10 points was the key. A win of more than 10 points = a 10 point win. Overtime wins = 1 point win. Obviously, the closer you are to 10 points win the better for your ranking. On the opposite side, you don't want to lose bad 10 points or more.
I don't remember where I read this but I thought it was one of the few things we did know about the NET ranking.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Like I said in the other thread, I don't think this is true. Points scored/allowed per possession is what matters. If you try to protect a lead by slowing the game down, that should have no effect on offensive efficiency.treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIt's a mystery exactly what they are assessing, but it's clear they are factoring in offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Therefore, blowing out your opponents is going to really help you. It's very clearly evidenced in the standings and movement within them.
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Re: RUTS is the key
You're both right. Efficiency is what matters, but efficiency on both sides of the court leads to blowouts.StanfordAggie wrote: ↑December 9th, 2022, 11:25 pmLike I said in the other thread, I don't think this is true. Points scored/allowed per possession is what matters. If you try to protect a lead by slowing the game down, that should have no effect on offensive efficiency.treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIt's a mystery exactly what they are assessing, but it's clear they are factoring in offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Therefore, blowing out your opponents is going to really help you. It's very clearly evidenced in the standings and movement within them.
Slowing the game down does not have a direct impact on efficiency, but it does matter. For example, USU is much more talented than Weber. When USU plays Weber, it will behoove the Aggies to play at a faster pace. More possessions mean more opportunities for that talent disparity to bear out statistically. Fewer possessions mean more variance, which is bad for the more talented team.
That's the math perspective. The basketball perspective is that slowing the game down generally makes your offense less efficient. Right now, the NET formula absolutely incentivizes teams to keep their foot on the gas. In the future, they will probably filter out garbage time (like Cleaning the Glass does for the NBA), but we aren't there yet.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Ok, so a higher points scored per possession and a lower points allowed per possession is what matters..... strongly correlating to scoring margin..... unless the number of possessions gets really unbalanced.StanfordAggie wrote: ↑December 9th, 2022, 11:25 pmLike I said in the other thread, I don't think this is true. Points scored/allowed per possession is what matters. If you try to protect a lead by slowing the game down, that should have no effect on offensive efficiency.treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIt's a mystery exactly what they are assessing, but it's clear they are factoring in offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Therefore, blowing out your opponents is going to really help you. It's very clearly evidenced in the standings and movement within them.
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Re: RUTS is the key
I basically agree with all of this. It is worth pointing out, though, that the math in your first paragraph changes once you have a lead late in the game. Even if you are the better team, at some point you want to minimize the number of possessions because your opponent won't have enough chances to score to make a comeback. And NET will not penalize a team for slowing the game down in this type of situation (unless stalling makes your offense less efficient, which is often an issue).MarioWest wrote: ↑December 10th, 2022, 6:40 amYou're both right. Efficiency is what matters, but efficiency on both sides of the court leads to blowouts.
Slowing the game down does not have a direct impact on efficiency, but it does matter. For example, USU is much more talented than Weber. When USU plays Weber, it will behoove the Aggies to play at a faster pace. More possessions mean more opportunities for that talent disparity to bear out statistically. Fewer possessions mean more variance, which is bad for the more talented team.
That's the math perspective. The basketball perspective is that slowing the game down generally makes your offense less efficient. Right now, the NET formula absolutely incentivizes teams to keep their foot on the gas. In the future, they will probably filter out garbage time (like Cleaning the Glass does for the NBA), but we aren't there yet.
It's definitely strongly correlated with scoring margin. I'm just taking issue with the claim that you have to RUTS to maximize your NET ranking. If you are RUTS, then you probably keep playing at a fast pace to get as many possessions as possible. My point is that slowing the game down to protect a lead will not hurt your offensive efficiency (unless playing stall ball makes your offense less efficient). So NET does not necessarily incentive RUTS.
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Re: RUTS is the key
I assume that this does matter, but I also assume that it's not all that matters. The NCAA will not release the formula, unless you are somehow privy to it.StanfordAggie wrote: ↑December 9th, 2022, 11:25 pmLike I said in the other thread, I don't think this is true. Points scored/allowed per possession is what matters. If you try to protect a lead by slowing the game down, that should have no effect on offensive efficiency.treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIt's a mystery exactly what they are assessing, but it's clear they are factoring in offensive and defensive efficiency numbers. Therefore, blowing out your opponents is going to really help you. It's very clearly evidenced in the standings and movement within them.
It's hard to say who's right or wrong when the formula is not transparent and no one knows exactly what is included in it. Yes, there is a press release that says that scoring margin is no longer included, but it doesn't say what IS included. I doubt that the formula is simply based on a single offensive and defensive efficiency metric. What I can say is, every time a team blows someone out, beating the spread or KenPom spread, even if they're a horrible team, it moves them up significantly in NET. The opposite is also true. Prove me wrong.
Also, the point of this whole thread was that there is an incentive to RUTS. RUTSing includes keeping your foot on the gas pedal which also includes keeping your best players on the court for the full game or vast majority of the game. If all that was calculated was offensive and defensive efficiency (which I'm sure is false), RUTSing would still maximize your offensive and defensive efficiency because your best players are on the court and you're trying to score as much as possible while disallowing your opponents to score as much as possible. It seem like the logical thing to do in sports, but in recent years some "unwritten rules" have crept into the game. You're supposed to call off the dogs once you're up by a certain amount. That would come at a detriment to your NET ranking.
Two examples from the NBA last night:
1 - Last night in the Lakers Philly game Philadelphia took a shot clock violation at the end of the game because it was out of hand and they apparently wanted to be polite. Even worse... the lakers didn't even try to score in the last 10 seconds of the game. They just dribbled it out conceding defeat. Doing this in College Basketball could cost you a trip to the dance. It will still happen, but I would not fault a team for neck stepping in these situations..
2 - In the Jazz Timbelwolves game last night Rudy Gobert got the ball with 2 seconds left and laid the ball in. He could've dunked it emphatically but instead politely laid it in. This was Gobert's homecoming game, and the fact that he made the shot instead of running out the clock did not sit well with some. After the game Malik Beasley walked up to Rudy and had some choice words for him. They had to be separated. Imagine being on the bubble, not taking that shot, and watching a team pass you into the tournament because you were polite.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Wow, instead of a big jump up, La Tech gets dragged down by 80 spots. They were on the cusp of being a Q2 victory but get dragged down squarely into Q4 territory. Meanwhile SJSU makes a huge jump up by beating Santa Clara by 11 and Santa Clara drops a little. Wyoming is a load stone of death. It will take a lot of wins for them to not be a horrible loss.scotlandog wrote:Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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Re: RUTS is the key
As has been mentioned in another thread, every conference except the Big 12 has at least one team worse in the NET than Wyoming. So, almost everyone in the country is going to have a bunch of games with teams at Wyoming’s level.scotlandog wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 10:09 amWow, instead of a big jump up, La Tech gets dragged down by 80 spots. They were on the cusp of being a Q2 victory but get dragged down squarely into Q4 territory. Meanwhile SJSU makes a huge jump up by beating Santa Clara by 11 and Santa Clara drops a little. Wyoming is a load stone of death. It will take a lot of wins for them to not be a horrible loss.scotlandog wrote:Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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The reason the PAC-12 is ranked 6th behind the MWC is because they have Cal at 349. If they traded Cal for Wyoming, the PAC-12 would jump up to 4th ahead of the Big East.
The Big East has Georgetown, the SEC has South Carolina and the Big Ten has Minnesota. If USU can enter the MWC season with one loss and a 25 NET, they will have all kinds of margin for error by losing a few games. At that point, they could get an at-large by just tying for 4th place in the conference.
Re: RUTS is the key
I’m puzzled by this one. The average number of Q4 games among the top 40 teams in the NET is 3.625, with one team having played seven. USU has played only one Q4 game.MarioWest wrote: ↑December 9th, 2022, 8:37 amThis part is really interesting. The NET SOS metric sounds very similar to what ESPN's BPI uses. That means USU's NET SOS really does rank 314 since BPI has the Aggies at 293. There was some speculation in another thread that the SOS number could be a mistake, but now I don't think so. That leaves me with two questions:treesap32 wrote: ↑December 8th, 2022, 1:50 pmIn addition, the overall and non-conference strength of schedule has been modernized to reflect a truer measure for how hard it is to defeat opponents. The strength of schedule is based on rating every game on a team's schedule for how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win. It considers opponent strength and site of each game, assigning each game a difficulty score. Aggregating these across all games results in an overall expected win percentage versus a team's schedule, which can be ranked to get a better measure of the strength of schedule.
1. How much does NET SOS matter if USU is ranked 16 overall despite being 314 in SOS?
2. Why is USU such an outlier in terms of Avg Opp NET Rank (31) vs NET SOS (314)?
My best guess is that USU's lack of road games explains the bizarrely low SOS number. Notre Dame has the next largest gap between Avg Opp NET Rank (136) and NET SOS (349). They have yet to play a road game.
USU has played three Q1/Q2 games with one Q4 game. Their differential between Q1/Q2 and Q4 is two. Among the top 40 NET teams, only St. Mary’s and Gonzaga have had a schedule in which the number of Q1/Q2 games exceed the number of Q4 games by more than two.
It’s hard to imagine a SOS calculation that is skewed enough to put USU at 314.
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Re: RUTS is the key
The problem with Wyoming that makes them unique is Ike is hurt right now but will be back for conference play and they will be a whole different team when he is back.dogie wrote:As has been mentioned in another thread, every conference except the Big 12 has at least one team worse in the NET than Wyoming. So, almost everyone in the country is going to have a bunch of games with teams at Wyoming’s level.scotlandog wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 10:09 amWow, instead of a big jump up, La Tech gets dragged down by 80 spots. They were on the cusp of being a Q2 victory but get dragged down squarely into Q4 territory. Meanwhile SJSU makes a huge jump up by beating Santa Clara by 11 and Santa Clara drops a little. Wyoming is a load stone of death. It will take a lot of wins for them to not be a horrible loss.scotlandog wrote:Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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The reason the PAC-12 is ranked 6th behind the MWC is because they have Cal at 349. If they traded Cal for Wyoming, the PAC-12 would jump up to 4th ahead of the Big East.
The Big East has Georgetown, the SEC has South Carolina and the Big Ten has Minnesota. If USU can enter the MWC season with one loss and a 25 NET, they will have all kinds of margin for error by losing a few games. At that point, they could get an at-large by just tying for 4th place in the conference.
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Re: RUTS is the key
One other thing to keep in mind is we only knowing the ranking of each team and not the actual NET score. Maybe the teams ranked 10-40 are closely bunched together, so a win results in a big jump, while teams ranked 200-240 are more spread out, resulting in a win over a much higher ranked program having a lesser impact in ranking.scotlandog wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 10:09 amWow, instead of a big jump up, La Tech gets dragged down by 80 spots. They were on the cusp of being a Q2 victory but get dragged down squarely into Q4 territory. Meanwhile SJSU makes a huge jump up by beating Santa Clara by 11 and Santa Clara drops a little. Wyoming is a load stone of death. It will take a lot of wins for them to not be a horrible loss.scotlandog wrote:Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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While Wyoming would probably have a completely different record with Ike and a much higher NET, all USU should worry about is the next game on the schedule. Even if Wyoming with Ike sweeps USU during the regular season, the selection committee is astute enough to realize the difference of Wyoming with and without Ike.
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Re: RUTS is the key
I don’t give the committee any such credit. They will look at our NET, which will be negatively impacted if swept by WYO and they will just see it as 2 Q3/4 losses.bwcrc wrote:One other thing to keep in mind is we only knowing the ranking of each team and not the actual NET score. Maybe the teams ranked 10-40 are closely bunched together, so a win results in a big jump, while teams ranked 200-240 are more spread out, resulting in a win over a much higher ranked program having a lesser impact in ranking.scotlandog wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 10:09 amWow, instead of a big jump up, La Tech gets dragged down by 80 spots. They were on the cusp of being a Q2 victory but get dragged down squarely into Q4 territory. Meanwhile SJSU makes a huge jump up by beating Santa Clara by 11 and Santa Clara drops a little. Wyoming is a load stone of death. It will take a lot of wins for them to not be a horrible loss.scotlandog wrote:Another test of the RUTS is Wyoming’s win against La Tech tonight 92-65, especially when La Tech was 170 spots ahead of them. This should be a significant improvement of NET ranking for them. We shall see.
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While Wyoming would probably have a completely different record with Ike and a much higher NET, all USU should worry about is the next game on the schedule. Even if Wyoming with Ike sweeps USU during the regular season, the selection committee is astute enough to realize the difference of Wyoming with and without Ike.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Actually, the NCAA has said what is included:treesap32 wrote: ↑December 10th, 2022, 4:32 pmI assume that this does matter, but I also assume that it's not all that matters. The NCAA will not release the formula, unless you are somehow privy to it.StanfordAggie wrote: ↑December 9th, 2022, 11:25 pmLike I said in the other thread, I don't think this is true. Points scored/allowed per possession is what matters. If you try to protect a lead by slowing the game down, that should have no effect on offensive efficiency.
It's hard to say who's right or wrong when the formula is not transparent and no one knows exactly what is included in it. Yes, there is a press release that says that scoring margin is no longer included, but it doesn't say what IS included. I doubt that the formula is simply based on a single offensive and defensive efficiency metric. What I can say is, every time a team blows someone out, beating the spread or KenPom spread, even if they're a horrible team, it moves them up significantly in NET. The opposite is also true. Prove me wrong.
https://www.ncaa.com/news/basketball-me ... -explainedIn May 2020, the NCAA announced there will be changes made to the NCAA Evaluation Tool to increase accuracy and simplify it by reducing a five-component metric to just two.
The remaining factors include the Team Value Index (TVI), which is a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home, as well as an adjusted net efficiency rating. The adjusted efficiency is a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played. For example, a given efficiency value (net points per 100 possessions) against stronger opposition rates higher than the same efficiency against lesser opponents and having a certain efficiency on the road rates higher than the same efficiency at home.
Assuming that the NCAA is not lying in this release (which is dated less than a week ago), only two factors are used to calculate the NET ranking. It sounds like one of them is a pure win/loss criteria that does not consider the score at all. The other is an adjusted efficiency ranking. Nowhere is margin of victory considered directly.
Also, it is worth pointing out that saying, "I saw some teams beat the spread who moved up in the rankings therefore point spread must matter in the rankings" is not very convincing for many reasons. First, as we have discussed elsewhere, point spread and efficiency are closely correlated. More importantly, you can show almost anything you want with a few anecdotal data points. If you want to collect some data on how all teams in the country perform versus the spread and compare it to changes in the NET rankings over a period of a couple weeks or months, you may have an argument. (And if you want to do this, I will even help analyze the data. ) But a few data point is not very convincing, especially since the rankings are also a function of how every other team performed that day.
Oh come on. I think even you know that this is hyperbole. Most teams average between 60 and 80 possessions per game in a college basketball game. The effect on the efficiency ranking if you choose not to RUTS the score on your final possession or two in a single game is going to be rounding error. And as I said elsewhere, if you slow the game down when you have a substantial lead (which is Basketball 101 tactics), that should not hurt your offensive efficiency. So I don't know that there is a big incentive to RUTS.treesap32 wrote: ↑December 10th, 2022, 4:32 pmAlso, the point of this whole thread was that there is an incentive to RUTS. RUTSing includes keeping your foot on the gas pedal which also includes keeping your best players on the court for the full game or vast majority of the game. If all that was calculated was offensive and defensive efficiency (which I'm sure is false), RUTSing would still maximize your offensive and defensive efficiency because your best players are on the court and you're trying to score as much as possible while disallowing your opponents to score as much as possible. It seem like the logical thing to do in sports, but in recent years some "unwritten rules" have crept into the game. You're supposed to call off the dogs once you're up by a certain amount. That would come at a detriment to your NET ranking.
Two examples from the NBA last night:
1 - Last night in the Lakers Philly game Philadelphia took a shot clock violation at the end of the game because it was out of hand and they apparently wanted to be polite. Even worse... the lakers didn't even try to score in the last 10 seconds of the game. They just dribbled it out conceding defeat. Doing this in College Basketball could cost you a trip to the dance. It will still happen, but I would not fault a team for neck stepping in these situations..
2 - In the Jazz Timbelwolves game last night Rudy Gobert got the ball with 2 seconds left and laid the ball in. He could've dunked it emphatically but instead politely laid it in. This was Gobert's homecoming game, and the fact that he made the shot instead of running out the clock did not sit well with some. After the game Malik Beasley walked up to Rudy and had some choice words for him. They had to be separated. Imagine being on the bubble, not taking that shot, and watching a team pass you into the tournament because you were polite.
That's not to say that there aren't problems with the system. The obvious example I can think of would be USU during our Big West days where we were routinely beating opponents by 20-30 and putting second stringers/Novich Hunter on the court in the second half. Nowadays you can hurt yourself if you give your reserves too much playing time in a big win. But I like to think that will only really hurt excellent teams in bad conferences. Resting your starters for part of the game in a couple blowout wins won't make a difference over the course of a full season. And if you have more than a couple blowout wins, you should be scheduling harder teams anyway. I'm only sympathetic to teams that have no choice but to play a larger number of bad teams because they share a conference.
Also, what is the alternative here? Most people would agree that if team A beats Team B by 1 and Team C beats Team B by 50, then Team C is probably better than team A. But if you don't consider margin of victory at all, then you can't take advantage of that information. A big challenge with any kind of ranking system is to make the rankings as accurate as possible without creating incentives to RUTS. I think the NCAA has done an excellent job overall of creating a system that gives higher rankings to the best teams without producing a big incentive to RUTS. That incentive will always be there if your ranking considers margin of victory at all, but by focusing on efficiency rather than raw scoring margin, the incentive is significantly reduced.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Net gives them less plausible deniability now though, it takes a lot of bias out. NCAA formulated the Net themselves, the committee can’t just ignore it anymore like they used to with RPI
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Re: RUTS is the key
I know but you are saying if we took 2 Q4 losses from Wyoming that the committee would somehow overlook that. That scenario would cause our NET to take a major hit and they would just look at that NET value. They won’t say, well they lost to WYO with their injured guy back so we will ignore the bad losses and also assume their NET would be higher. Ain’t gonna happen.MetsJetsAggies wrote:Net gives them less plausible deniability now though, it takes a lot of bias out. NCAA formulated the Net themselves, the committee can’t just ignore it anymore like they used to with RPI
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Re: RUTS is the key
Yeah probably true, Wyoming could jump up a lot with a few wins in the MW and turn into a q3 though. It’s really unfortunate they lost him for the entirety of OOC and the rest of the team stunk it up. Shades of the WAC days when NMSU would do that every yearscotlandog wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 5:02 pmI know but you are saying if we took 2 Q4 losses from Wyoming that the committee would somehow overlook that. That scenario would cause our NET to take a major hit and they would just look at that NET value. They won’t say, well they lost to WYO with their injured guy back so we will ignore the bad losses and also assume their NET would be higher. Ain’t gonna happen.MetsJetsAggies wrote:Net gives them less plausible deniability now though, it takes a lot of bias out. NCAA formulated the Net themselves, the committee can’t just ignore it anymore like they used to with RPI
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Re: RUTS is the key
A single Q3/Q4 loss isn't going to cost an NCAA bid if the rest of the resume is solid. And from my point of view, if we can't beat Wyoming at home even with Ike, then we probably don't deserve go to the NCAA tournament. JFW and don't leave it in the committee's hands.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Wyoming was picked pretty high pre season though, but I agree we should win at home.StanfordAggie wrote: ↑December 11th, 2022, 6:18 pmA single Q3/Q4 loss isn't going to cost an NCAA bid if the rest of the resume is solid. And from my point of view, if we can't beat Wyoming at home even with Ike, then we probably don't deserve go to the NCAA tournament. JFW and don't leave it in the committee's hands.
In fact we should beat everyone at home this season. No reason for the Spectrum to be anything but deafening and back to its peak. I’m sure we will drop at least 1 but holding serve at home is a must
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Re: RUTS is the key
hmmm.....Utah beat UTSA by 21 last night but didn't quite cover the spread of -22.5. They end up dropping 3 spots in the NET from 17 to 20. Didn't run up the score quite enough.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Got to run it up beyond the expected. I’m sure the spread to start uses a lot of the same analytics to evaluate teams. If that’s the expected, then you need to RUTS beyond that to move the needle, otherwise you are exactly where you should be ranked.Aglicious wrote:hmmm.....Utah beat UTSA by 21 last night but didn't quite cover the spread of -22.5. They end up dropping 3 spots in the NET from 17 to 20. Didn't run up the score quite enough.
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Re: RUTS is the key
Is there any way we can stop this? There is zero credible evidence that beating (or failing to beat) the point spread affects a team's NET ranking and plenty of evidence that it doesn't. Three spots in the NET ranking is rounding error that means nothing. I'm sure I could cherry pick a dozen other examples of teams that didn't cover the spread and moved up in NET anyway if I really wanted to take the time to do so. I'm not sure why this board feels the need to keep repeating these rumors after they have been seriously challenged (if not completely debunked). The NET formula is not publicly known, but the best available evidence suggests that it is a mixture of Ken Pomeroy's efficiency rankings combined with bonuses for beating good teams. As far as we know margin of victory is not even considered by the current formulation of NET.scotlandog wrote: ↑December 14th, 2022, 1:13 pmGot to run it up beyond the expected. I’m sure the spread to start uses a lot of the same analytics to evaluate teams. If that’s the expected, then you need to RUTS beyond that to move the needle, otherwise you are exactly where you should be ranked.Aglicious wrote:hmmm.....Utah beat UTSA by 21 last night but didn't quite cover the spread of -22.5. They end up dropping 3 spots in the NET from 17 to 20. Didn't run up the score quite enough.
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