The 2021-22 basketball season is well underway, and as things are starting to heat up, the talk will only amplify.
Arguments will ensue over who is the best, who’s played the best, who’s in the best conference and who will win it all.
Enter the NCAA’s relatively new system for ranking basketball teams. This is the fourth season the NCAA will utilize the NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) rankings to evaluate the strength of its member institutions’ basketball programs.
How the NET rankings work
The factors included in the system for ranking teams include the Team Value Index (TVI), which is a result-based feature that rewards teams for beating quality opponents, especially in away games, 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.
These rankings are sorted into four quadrants, representing Quad 1, Quad 2, Quad 3 and Quad 4.
Using the quadrant system, which saw its fourth season of life in 2020-21, the quality of wins and losses will be organized based on game location and the opponent’s NET ranking.
- Quadrant 1: Home 1-30, Neutral 1-50, Away 1-75
- Quadrant 2: Home 31-75, Neutral 51-100, Away 76-135
- Quadrant 3: Home 76-160, Neutral 101-200, Away 135-240
- Quadrant 4: Home 161-353, Neutral 201-353, Away 241-353
The number of Quadrant 1 wins and Quadrant 3/4 losses will be incredibly important when it comes time for NCAA tournament selection and seeding.
The NET rankings serve as the primary sorting tool for Division I men’s basketball, they play an important role in establishing a team’s resume.
What is Alabama’s NET ranking, and what are the numbers behind it?
As of now, the Crimson Tide is seated at No. 20 in the most recent NET rankings. Using the previous information to unravel the logic behind this ranking, let’s take a look at Alabama’s results throughout the season.
The Crimson Tide are 13-6 overall, with a 9-1 record at home, a paltry 1-3 record on the road (it can be argued that Alabama played a road game in Seattle against Gonzaga) and a 3-2 record in neutral site games.
What is helping the Tide in the rankings is their results against Quadrant 1 opponents. Alabama has played nine Quad 1 opponents and boasts a record of 5-4 against them, including wins against AP/NET No. 2 Gonzaga, AP No. 19 (NET No. 10) LSU and AP No. 18 (NET No. 11) Tennessee.
The Tide have played three Quad 2 opponents and have dropped just one of those (Iona). South Dakota State and Miami (FL) were defeated by Alabama to bring their Quad 2 record to 2-1.
What may be bringing the Tide down, however, is their road loss to Missouri, who was Quad 3 when factoring in location, but became the Tide’s lone win (and lone matchup) against a Quad 4 opponent when the Tigers got beat in Tuscaloosa.
Alabama still has five Quad 1 games on their schedule, as of now, but these rankings change regularly and anything can happen between now and the final game of the season in early March.
I hope this helped you to understand the semantics and logic behind the NCAA’s relatively new basketball evaluation tool, and where the Crimson Tide stands in the grand scheme of it.
Next up for the Crimson Tide is an away game at Georgia to face off against the 5-14 Bulldogs on Tuesday at 5:30 p.m. CST.
Stay tuned to Roll Tide Wire for all the latest on the Crimson Tide!
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