The months leading up to the college basketball season are my happy place as a sports journalist.
Teams slowly roll out their schedules, giving me excitement as I see the tantalizing matchups that I’ll schedule on my calendar.
The same goes for Belmont basketball. The anticipation begins to build as I see the games I get to cover.
With women’s basketball releasing its schedule first, the praise among the office and my friends was high.
“WE GOT TEAMS LIKE OHIO STATE, DUKE, and KENTUCKY TO PLAY US?!”
But when men’s basketball released its nonconference schedule the next day, the reaction was a mix of confusion and disappointment.
“This is mid. Women’s basketball gets Ohio State to come to the Curb and men’s basketball gets Maryville?”
I’ll admit I had the same reaction at first. Then I had a realization.
Don’t blame Belmont men’s basketball for its schedule. Blame the system that makes it difficult for the Bruins to schedule high-profile teams.
In 2018, the NCAA opted to use the NCAA Evalutation Tool to decide potential NCAA Tournament teams and how to seed those teams.
The ranking mechanism decides placement based on two factors: team value index, an “algorithm set up to reward teams who beat other good teams,” according to the NCAA’s website and net efficiency, where a team’s defensive efficiency is subtracted from its offensive efficiency.
Teams want high offensive efficiency and very low defensive efficiency.
For anyone confused reading that, teams don’t want to eke out wins anymore. They want to dominate by 30 points to look better in the NET rankings.
The NET rankings also help organize the quadrant system, which ranks the teams into four quadrants and helps decide a team’s number of quality wins and season-ending losses.
Belmont’s NET ranking was 117, meaning any big-name school, such as Duke or North Carolina, looking to host the Bruins might face the risk of a Quad 3 loss, which can severely hurt a team’s chances at a high seed in the NCAA Tournament.
For teams hoping to get one of those final at-large bids into the tournament, the risk of a Quad 3 loss is even greater since one bad loss can make the difference between playing in March Madness or watching it from the couch.
It’s no wonder Quad 1 teams are only scheduling non-conference games against Quad 1 teams or schools with NET rankings below the 200s, where the chances of losing are slim.
Lose to another Quad 1 team? That doesn’t really hurt too much because that team is amazing.
Beat a Quad 1 team? You just jumped five spots in the NET rankings.
Beat three Quad 4 teams by 30 each? You might find yourself in the top 10.
Last season, the Big 12 abused the system, having 10 of its 14 teams with non-conference schedule strengths below the 200s.
Of the 11 non-conference games Iowa State played, none of the Cyclones’ games were Quad 1.
Instead, nine of the 11 were Quad 4 games where the Cyclones average margin of victory was 37.4 points.
Also in the Big 12, BYU, Oklahoma and TCU scheduled plenty of Quad 4 opponents and dominated with average margins ranging from 27.4 to 37.0 points.
Of the 52 non-conference games played, the four teams had a record of 46-6.
Only one of those 46 wins, BYU over San Diego State, rated as Quad 1.
What was the end result?
The NET rankings in late December reveals the answer.
BYU- No. 2
Iowa State- No. 7
Oklahoma- No. 28
TCU- No. 45
As long as the NCAA continues to reward teams for hacking the system, Belmont has its hands tied behind its back when it comes to scheduling.
I’ll say it again. Blame the NCAA, not Belmont.
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This column was written by Ty Wellemeyer
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