NET vs. RPI breakdown

I promised a few folks that I'd crank up the numbers and see how the new NET compares to the RPI, and sadly, it's just what I expected.

If anyone doubts that the NCAA's new NET ranking tool is nothing more than a power grab by the Power conferences, here's the data that backs that up.

I just now compared the NET and RPI rankings of all 353 teams in Division 1, to see which teams got the biggest boosts from the old RPI to the NET and which teams got hurt the most in the switch.

As for who got the biggest bumps up from their RPI to their NET rankings (the Power conferences are the Big-12, ACC, Big-10, SEC, Big East and Pac-12 for this analysis - I kept the American Athletic out of that label for now)- the Power teams make up the top three, 8 out of the top 13, and 14 of the top 26:

+109 Northwestern 
+71 Georgia
+70 Illinois
+67 USC, Boise State, Vanderbilt
+66 Fordham
+64 NC State, Columbia, Evansville
+62 DePaul, American
+60 Pittsburgh
+58 Notre Dame, Appalachian State
+56 Richmond, Washington State
+52 Missouri, La Salle
+49 Little Rock
+48 Dartmouth
+45 Nebraska
+44 Penn State, Indiana, Ball State, UMass

In all of D-1, a total of 113 teams saw at least a ten-point rise from their RPI to their NET, and 40 power teams were among that group.

So 40 of the 75 power conference teams got nice bumps up the ratings when using NET. When over half of your teams are getting nice double-digit bumps, you'd expect that you'd also see close to half of them with double-digit slides, no?

Well, it's not even close to half. Try 7 outta 75.

Of the 124 teams that had a NET rating at least ten points below their RPI, only SEVEN were from power conferences (Villanova, UCLA, Seton Hall, Kansas, Arizona State, Minnesota and Washington).

That's right... just seven power teams saw any double-digit slide from the RPI to the NET... and even that didn't hurt, as six of those seven are still in the NCAA tourney.

Washington had the worst NET of any power conference team in comparison to its RPI (-23)... but there were SEVENTY-NINE teams not in power conferences who had it worse... and yes, I'm showing you the entire list:

-24 Long Beach State, Eastern Kentucky, North Carolina Central, Central Conn., Alabama State
-25 Davidson, Hofstra
-26 Rhode Island, Redford, Ohio, FIU, Cal State Fullerton, North Alabama
-27 UTRGV, Southeastern Louisiana
-29 UNCG, Western Kentucky, Abilene Christian
-30 Northeastern, Southern Utah
-31 Utah Valley, Sam Houston St.
-32 San Diego State, The Citadel, Arkansas-Pine Bluff
-33 Wagner, Idaho State
-34 UMBC
-35 Cornell
-36 Texas Southern, Delaware
-38 Old Dominion, NJIT, Eastern Illinois
-39 Robert Morris
-40 Gardner-Webb, Green Bay, Morehead State, Mt. St. Mary’s
-41 Yale
-42 Stony Brook, Siena
-43 Bowling Green, Redford, Campbell
-45 Colgate
-46 Georgia Southern, Eastern Washington
-47 Louisiana
-48 Montana, Marshall
-50 North Dakota State
-51 Lehigh, Omaha, Norfolk State
-54 New Orleans
-55 Kent State
-56 Drake
-62 Bucknell
-65 Prairie View A&M, Holy Cross
-66 Navy
-67 Monmouth
-68 Princeton
-74 Georgia State
-75 Canisius
-77 North Carolina A&T
-80 Harvard
-83 St. Francis (PA)

What all of this means is that the NET's inflating the overall ranking of the six power conferences at the expense of the other 26, and what gets me the most is that the NCAA ran the NET through a lot of trial-and-error to get results to end up like this. They knew the numbers would boost the bigs while killing the mids' at-large chances for the future.

Not only does the NET make it that much harder for mids to get at-large bids now, it trickles down to the NIT at-large pool as well. Teams like BYU, Bowling Green, Drake and San Diego State would normally have been in line for possible NIT bids with the old RPI ratings, but the NET ratings killed off their chances for the NIT this year.

Instead, power conference teams with horrible RPI numbers (NC State, Indiana, Nebraska, Arkansas, Butler, etc) swoop in with prettier NET numbers and take those NIT spots away.