The NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee teamed up with Google Cloud Professional Services to introduce the new ranking system, NET. The "NCAA Evaluation Tool" will be used to measure where your favorite college hoops team will be ranked throughout the regular season.
The system was approved by the committee in late July to replace the controversial RPI system. The premise of this new database is to gather key team performance data that focuses on teams' game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses.
Fans and critics, including high-rolling sports gambling establishments, will be watching out for the impact it will have on college sports. Most importantly, they will be keeping an eye on teams that trade on the power of their name rather than their performance, like the Missouri Tigers who finished fourth in their conference but were able to sneak into this year's NCAA Tournament as an at-large No. 8 seed without seeing a lot of regular season play from their highly touted freshman sensation, Michael Porter Jr. Porter Jr., who only played in three games, went on to become an NBA lottery pick. Fans argued he did not live up to the hype as an early favorite for National Freshman of the Year. On the other hand, the Nebraska Cornhuskers, who went 13-5 in a tough, highly competitive Big Ten conference, were snubbed out of the 2018 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.
The power of "over/under favorites" for certain matchups will be on many bettors' radar as NET may have the potential to be the main indicator of who you should place your last buck on.
Has the committee finally corrected an overdue issue, or is NET just another brick shot on a list of disappointing recent changes...
