What The Changes To NET Formula Means For Florida

In 2018 the NCAA made a major change to their NCAA Tournament selection process by finally doing away with the archaic RPI system they had used for decades and implementing their own system called the NET. Unlike the RPI which was a single metric the NET took multiple data points into account when evaluating teams and the rankings it put out were official in the eyes of the selection committee. Simply put, the NET is extremely important and therefore any alteration of it is significant.

For that reason it was rather large news on Monday when the NCAA announced that they were drastically changing what went into the NET formula.

In the first iteration of the NET there were five different factors that were accounted for:

1) Team Value Index
2) Adjusted Net Efficiency Rating
3) Winning Percentage
4) Adjusted Winning Percentage
5) Scoring Margin

On Monday they announced they would be simplifying the formula and now will only use team value index and adjusted efficiency rating while eliminating winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage, and scoring margin.

Some of what you read may have been a bit confusing, so let’s get into what this functionally means for the Gators.

Let’s start by explaining each of the five original factors. Team value index is a results-based algorithm that puts a value on the quality of a win or a loss based on the quality of the opponent. It’s the NCAA’s own secret formula so we don’t know exactly how it’s calculated, but it makes an attempt at properly valuing the quality of a win depending on how good or bad an opponent is.

Adjusted net efficiency rating is a net rating (a team’s average offensive score over 100 possessions minus their average points allowed defensively over 100 possessions) adjusted for quality of competition.

Winning percentage is games won divided by games played, you probably knew that one.

Adjusted winning percentage is another unknown NCAA formula but it was said to account for quality of competition.

Lastly, scoring margin accounted for how much a team won a game for, rewarding a team not just for getting a W but by weighing by margin. So, you’d get more credit for beating a team by 10 points than by beating them by 2.

How does this functionally affect the Gators?

The changes made by the NCAA favor teams who play tougher schedules and play quality opponents and considering the Gators have challenged themselves more than just about any other high major in the country over the last three seasons these changes are going to benefit them.

When it comes to formulas properly accounting for quality opponents you want them to be “adjusted” and that is a big part of what remains in the new NET. The two elements of the NET that weren’t adjusted (winning percentage and scoring margin) are now gone and that’s going to benefit teams like the Gators who play challenging schedules. You see, since those numbers weren’t adjusted, they would benefit a team that went 9-2 in the non-conference against bad competition more than a team that went 8-3 against better competition. They’d also benefit a team that won by 9 points over a bad team over a team that won by 1 over a great team. Yes, there are other elements of the NET that would have factored in some of the quality of competition but those two elements didn’t and getting rid of them is going to be a positive for the Gators.

Eliminating scoring margin and instead focusing on net rating has other interesting implications as it relates to the Gators. When it came to scoring margin it was pretty simplistic—you wanted to beat the other team by a wide spread. That would benefit faster-playing teams who increased the number of possessions in a game as more possessions would allow for the better team to “win” more possessions and ultimately win by more points.

That didn’t help the Gators who played slow and limited possessions, keeping games a little bit closer. However, now that they aren’t looking at scoring margin and are looking at net rating it’s actually going to benefit teams who play a lower number of possessions but execute properly. For example, if the Gators are at 1.15 points per possession offensively and 1.01 PPP defensively and play a low number of possessions (I pulled those numbers from two identical SEC wins, by the way) and won by 7 they would be rewarded greater than a team who went 1.11 PPP offensively and 1.02 PPP defensively but won by 12 because they played fast and played a lot of possessions.

The NET was instituted to try and account for the vastly different quality of opponents all throughout college basketball but had two factors that didn’t account for that very problem and they were appropriately axed. That’s going to benefit the Gators who play a tough schedule. The NET was also skewed towards teams that won games playing higher possession games which isn’t a factor in how good a team actually is and that was intelligently cut out as well, another element benefiting the slow playing Gators. These may be subtle changes but for a Florida team that wasn’t in good standing on Selection Sunday last year and wasn’t in a great position had this year finished these positive changes are important, and luckily they are in Florida’s favor.

Eric Fawcett
Eric is a basketball coach and writer from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. His work has been found at NBA international properties, ESPN, Bleacher Report, CBS Sports, Lindy's and others. He loves zone defenses, the extra pass, and a 30 second shot clock. Growing up in Canada, an American channel showing SEC basketball games was his first exposure to Gator hoops, and he has been hooked ever since. You can follow him on Twitter at @ericfawcett_.