Florida debuted at No. 6 in the first NCAA NET rankings of the 2024-25 college basketball season, and the Gators are roughly in the same spot at No. 7 one week later.
The one-spot dip is a result of the Marquette Golden Eagles splitting a pair of Quadrant 1 games over the past week. A road loss to No. 9 Iowa State doesn’t hurt Marquette and a home win over No. 36 Wisconsin helps a lot, especially come Selection Sunday.
“The 2024-25 men’s basketball season marks the seventh season of the NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings, which replaced the RPI prior to the 2018-19 season as the primary sorting tool for evaluating teams,” according to the NCAA.
While Top 25 polls remain popular, it’s the NET rankings that are used by the NCAA Tournament committee to seed teams in March. The rankings rely on a quadrant system (below), where Quadrant 1 (Q1) wins and Q3/Q4 losses matter the most.
Breaking down Florida’s wins by Quadrant
Before going into Florida’s resume, it’s important to understand how the quadrants are divided. Where a game is played has as much to do with the quadrant as the quality of the opponent. As the rankings change, so do the quality of the wins.
For example, Florida’s win at Florida State was a Q1 win a week ago, when the Seminoles were ranked No. 67 in the NET. Florida State has since dropped to No. 81, making it a Q2 win for Florida.
- 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
As mentioned above, Florida State’s dip in the NET means Florida currently has zero Q1 matchups through nine games.
The Gators are 2-0 in Q2 matchups, including a neutral site victory over Wichita State (No. 79) at the ESPN Events Invitational and a road win over FSU (No. 81).
Florida’s home win over Virginia (No. 125) gives UF a 3-0 record against Q3 matchups this season, the others being neutral-site victories over Wake Forest (No. 117) at the ESPN Events Invitational and South Florida (No. 172) in Jacksonville.
Florida is 4-0 against Q4 opponents. All four wins have come at home: Florida A&M (No. 305), Grambling (No. 267), Jacksonville (No. 165) and Southern Illinois (No. 209).
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