On Monday morning, an NCAA spokesperson dropped a link that wonks like us covet: unveiling this season’s NET rankings.
Several years ago, the NET debuted as the governing body’s defacto version of KenPom, replacing the easily gamed RPI as a tool to select and seed 68 teams in the NCAA tournament bracket. Unfortunately, it’s also notoriously weird — at least early on. Its algorithm, kept under lock and key, doesn’t precisely control for a team’s strength of schedule in weighing out efficiency margin.
Loosely translated: If you blow out a lot of bad teams, you won’t be punished for a toilet-paper-thin slate.