Men’s College Basketball Top 10, Bubble Team NET Rankings: A Top-10 Shakeup

The top 25 rankings are important for understanding just who is killing it in college basketball, but we can go deeper — all the way to the bubble and beyond. The NCAA Evaluation Tool, or NET, is a rankings system used in Division I basketball to help figure out which teams are going to participate in March Madness. As the NCAA puts it, NET “takes into account game results, strength of schedule, game location, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses,” the latter of which is determined by placing every Division I matchup into different quadrants, ranked 1 through 4, with 1 being the strongest teams and 4 the weakest — Quads aren’t just determined by record, but also whether a game was played at home, on the road or at a neutral site. Using NET, we can get a sense of which teams are the best at a given moment, as well as which ones are on the bubble for selection in March. While updated daily by the NCAA, we’ll track changes weekly. With that, here are the top 10 men’s college basketball teams through Feb. 23, according to NET. The Top 10 10. UConn (previous: 10) UConn stopped a multi-week slide, sticking within the top 10 thanks to wins against Creighton and Villanova — the latter was especially important, since Villanova even now is a top-30 team in NET and one of the few Big East teams slated for March Madness. Of course, it helps the Huskies that the teams behind them in NET this time last week — Nebraska, Louisville and Vanderbilt — didn’t exactly have weeks to remember. 9. Houston (previous: 6) A real rough week for Houston, which has lost three in a row in Big 12 conference play. To the Cougars’ credit, those losses came against three ranked opponents, not “just” teams familiar with them, but Houston is ranked, as well — in fact, it was No. 2 when this streak kicked off. Iowa State, Arizona and Kansas are no joke, however, and the chaos of the Big 12 looms over every matchup within it at this point. 8. Iowa State (previous: 5) Speaking of Iowa State, it might have defeated Houston right before last week’s check-in, but then it lost to a shorthanded BYU squad in its one game since. Next up is Utah — just 117th in NET — so Iowa State is going to need a rout to get things moving back in the right direction here. 7. Florida (previous: 9) Florida beat South Carolina by 14 points, then Ole Miss by 19 while dropping 94 on the Rebels. Sure, Florida is just 8-5 in Quad 1 matchups and has another L besides, but the Gators have also had the seventh-toughest schedule of anyone in Division I men’s basketball. The team of the last couple of months during SEC play is also markedly different in its performance than the one still finding its footing early in the season. 6. Purdue (previous: 8) There is only so much shame in losing to Michigan like Purdue did to kick off its week, plus, the Boilermakers recovered by beating Indiana by 29. It helps, too, that there was all kinds of chaos surrounding Purdue that it was not involved in to the same degree — addition by subtraction for the Boilermakers in this week’s ranking, or something like it. 5. Gonzaga (previous: 7) Gonzaga, too, benefited from not having quite as many issues as the teams now behind it in NET. San Francisco was handled with ease, 80-59, but the Bulldogs beat Pacific — 106th in NET — by just 9 points, a reminder that Gonzaga hasn’t dominated West Coast Conference play to the degree its 15-1 record suggests. It has come close to losing more times than it should, and actually did drop one to Portland — a loss to a better team than that is a possibility in the tourney, if Gonzaga doesn’t tighten things up. 4. Illinois (previous: 4) Illinois wrecked USC, 101-65, then followed it up with an overtime loss to UCLA that very easily could have been a second W if any of the Fighting Illini had remembered to guard against a last-second layup. Even with that error in judgment, Illinois remains 4th in NET — another showdown with Michigan looms, however. 3. Arizona (previous: 3) Despite the absence of Koa Peat, No. 2 Arizona took down ranked BYU and Houston, avoiding any adverse changes to its standing in either the Big 12 or in NET. This week will be another major test: first up is No. 4 Iowa State, then the Kansas team that ended the Wildcats’ chances at an undefeated season. 2. Duke (previous: 2) Beating Michigan was huge, of course, but NET still sees the Wolverines as the superior team. Consider: Michigan is 9-0 on the road, while Duke has one away L, and the Wolverines have, more importantly, faced the second-toughest schedule of anyone in Division I men’s basketball this season. Duke has had a tough road, sure, but 19th isn’t second. Still, the Blue Devils have shown they can win what matters in the end, and the difference between these two teams is slight. [Men’s College Basketball Rankings: Duke, Michigan Lead The Way] 1. Michigan (previous: 1) Check Wins Against Bubble, which imagines how likely a team is to win against the proverbial bubble team and assigns a score of 0-1 to the game to be added or subtracted as necessary, to reinforce that point: Michigan is first in D-I with a WAB of 10.47, while Duke is second at 10.25. They are the only teams over 10, with Arizona the only other one even over 9. Risers and Fallers In the span of a week, some teams can see their spot in the rankings dramatically shift. Here are the five teams that rose the most in men’s college basketball in the last week… T5. Eastern Washington, 222 to 207: Winning against Sacramento State was better than losing against it, of course, but the one that moved the needle here was the W vs. Portland State. The Vikings were 130th in NET before the matchup, making that a significant upset for the Eagles. T5. American, 262 to 247: Those weren’t the only Eagles to have a good week, as the American University variety also picked up a pair of wins against Army (75-63) and Bucknell (75-57). Those are both bottom-30 or so teams, but that’s why American didn’t move up even further. 4. Lipscomb, 184 to 168: The Vikings just got past Bellarmine, 75-72, but made up for that near-upset by taking down North Alabama by 22. Like with American, bigger margins of victory all around would have meant more of a climb, but this was still good for the fourth-most in a single week. 3. Tennessee State, 235 to 215: Lindenwood and SIUE both fell to Tennessee State this week, with both matchups being against teams that started out the week right around where Tennessee State was in NET. While the Tigers won the first by 9 points, SIUE got beat down, 80-53. 2. Western Kentucky, 175 to 153: An overtime win against Delaware hurt almost as much as it helped, given the gap in NET between the two, but the Hilltoppers made up for that by crushing Liberty — ranked 75th — 94-73. Liberty, by the way, went from on the bubble of the bubble all the way back to 90th. 1. Chattanooga, 300 to 276: The Mocs put on two high-scoring games in a row, dropping 94 on Mercer and then beating The Citadel by 21 points. While that’s how things are supposed to go against The Citadel, a bottom-15 team, Mercer came into the week nearly top-150. …and the five that fell the furthest. T5. Lamar University, 213 to 229: New Orleans took Lamar down in what cannot be considered an upset given the proximity of the two in NET, but then lost to 258th-ranked Nicholls State. T5. Cornell, 147 to 163: Cornell fell out of the top-150 thanks to Harvard, which basically took its place after beating the Big Red by 19 points in their lone game of the week. 4. Portland, 208 to 226: Yes, the team that beat Gonzaga not all that long ago has fallen back to 226th in NET. The Pilots fell to Pepperdine, 95-87, then Seattle beat them 71-59. Hey, cheer up: Gonzaga is next on the schedule again! 3. Lindenwood, 240 to 258: Not only was there the loss to Tennessee State, but Lindenwood also dropped a game to Tennessee Tech, which ranked 315th in NET before that upset. 2. Mercer, 153 to 173: The before and after of losing to Chattanooga, but Mercer also defeated Samford by just 3 points in its other game of the week — Samford was 211th in NET, so that was frowned upon, as much as an algorithm can do that sort of thing. 1. SIUE, 241 to 264: Tennessee State crushing SIUE was already covered, but the Cougars also lost to Tennessee Tech before that. On the Bubble Of the 68 March Madness teams in the tournament, 31 of them are conference champions who receive automatic entry into the tournament. The other 37 spots are at-large bids. With that in mind, we will look at the teams ranked between 64-to-73 in NET each week, as those are the ones who are the most on the bubble for the tourney. 73. Minnesota (previous: 86): Good news for Minnesota is that it beat Oregon and Rutgers to bump it up in NET. Bad news for Minnesota is that it has to face Michigan next, then UCLA. 72. Stanford (previous: 69): A quiet week for the Cardinal, but also not a great once since the lone game was a 72-66 loss to California. 71. Oklahoma (previous: 68): The Sooners also slipped back a little — it would have been worse if the losses didn’t come against ranked Tennessee and top-50 Texas A&M. 70. High Point (previous: 78): The Panthers are ending the season on a high note, as they ride a 10-game winning streak into the final matchup of the regular season against Presbyterian. All that Big South dominance won’t matter if High Point can’t beat Winthrop in the conference tourney, however. [Get to Know a Mid-Major: Big South] 69. Colorado (previous: 73): The Buffaloes just played once in the last week, but made it count by beating Oklahoma State 83-69 — the Cowboys were in these rankings a week ago, but are not this time around thanks to Colorado. 68. Arizona State (previous: 71): Upsetting ranked Texas Tech was significant, and helped lessen the sting of then losing to Baylor. Still, the W against the Red Raiders will stick out more to the Selection Committee than the L here, if the Sun Devils can finish the season with enough relevancy to make it have to count at all. 67. LSU (previous: 67): A 3-point loss to Texas followed by keeping it closed with ranked Alabama resulted in the Tigers running in place despite not winning a thing. 66. Nevada (previous: 59): An 87-71 loss to San Jose State was terrible for Nevada — San Jose State ranked within the bottom-100 in NET, and not only did Nevada get pushed back into the bubble but now has a -1.43 WAB to go with that descent. 65. Wake Forest (previous: 65): A win against Clemson (31st in NET) helped cancel out the loss to Virginia Tech (58th), though, it was not a good loss: the Hokies outscored the Demon Deacons by 19. 64. Yale (previous: 64): One game, one win, no change. Penn fell to Yale, 74-70, which is good because it’s a dub, but not moving the Bulldogs anywhere because Penn is merely a top-175 team. You have to win by more to move up and out of the bubble against that competition.
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