Bracketology: Forget About NET

As rankings, seeding, and brackets are discussed, we come to the part of the calendar where the NET is argued over and complained about. The NET replaced RPI in 2018-19 and has been misunderstood ever since. Pundits repeatedly respond to the NET rankings as being flawed. They talk about how any system that ranks <Insert Team Here> at <Insert Rank Number> must be broken. But every year when Selection Sunday comes around, there are vast discrepancies between the NET Rankings and the official seed list. Last year, NET #9 Kansas was #3 on the Selection Committee's S-Curve. NET #13 FAU was down at #33 on the S-Curve while NET #18 Utah State barely made the field as #40. In the other direction, #24 Kansas State was #11 on the S-Curve while #67 Pittsburgh was the worst NET but earned #44 on the S-Curve.

What does that mean? Yes, the NET is flawed, as is every other ranking system that tries to evaluate college basketball teams. But the point of the NET is not to be perfect, it is to put data in context and make it easier for human eyes to evaluate.

This is the case every year and has been going back to the RPI. The reason for seeding discrepancies is because while the NET does order the teams in the list, it is not used like a ranking system by the NCAA. If it were, we could just punch the tickets of the 32 league champions, then take the top 36 non-champs from the NET rankings, sort them in NET order, and we'd have a Tournament Field. This whole Bracketology project would be much easier, that's for sure. But that's not what the NET is for.

The NCAA has said it repeatedly: the NET is a sorting tool. But what they don't say often enough (and should) is they actually use it for sorting opponents. NET doesn't get you in or out, it tells you where your opponents fall in Quadrants (the boxes on the team sheets where teams are sorted). When I build out a bracket, I only use NET when I am putting together my candidate list because Team Sheets are listed in NET order. Once I have teams on the spreadsheet, a team's individual NET loses all meaning. The only way NET is used beyond that point is for what your opponents' NET rankings are, which is how teams are sorted into Quadrants.

Looking at Marquette, their NET of 17 doesn't matter nearly as much as the NET rankings of teams they play. When the NCAA calls NET a sorting tool, it is sorting teams into the four Quadrants at the BOTTOM of the team sheet, and subdividing Quadrants 1 and 2. More important to Marquette is the ranking of opponents like Illinois, Creighton, and Kansas, who are their best wins, because it is the rankings of those teams that give Marquette three wins in Quadrant 1A, which are the best wins a team can get. Similarly, Butler's #66 NET is a negative for Marquette and if it continues to fall, having a Q3 loss would be more damaging to Marquette's resume than whether their NET #14 or #24, particularly as last year the team ranked #14 was 5-seed San Diego State while #24 was 3-seed Kansas State. Why was that? San Diego State had just 5 Q1 wins while K-State had 9. Their individual NET rank didn't matter.

NET is also primarily an efficiency model. So, like kenpom, its rankings are based primarily on how efficient a team is on offense and defense. So if you score a lot and don't allow many per possession, you will be rewarded, especially if you do that against quality opponents. It does also reward teams that run up scores on lesser opponents. I know some people have a problem with this, but because NET is opponent-focused, all it needs to tell you is when you beat that team in that Quadrant, what does that team look like on the average night? It weights the efficiency of performances, averages them out, and then ranks teams on that basis.You might get the occasional outlier like an Alabama whose NET is higher than their record would indicate, but as that doesn't give them a seed-line boost (#8 NET Alabama is #22 on today's S-Curve) so the only people it actually benefits are Alabama's opponents. The teams that beat Alabama did beat a team that on the average night plays really well. A team like Creighton might benefit from that win over Alabama, but as that single result only accounts for 1/18th (so far) of Alabama's overall season and NET ranking, it really isn't statistically significant that Creighton benefits from Alabama's overall performance against a top-5 schedule.

Another complaint about NET is how much teams move. The reason teams move like they do is because NET has a team score, just like kenpom uses Adjusted Efficiency Margin to order his teams. But unlike kenpom, we don't see what those team scores are. Let's look at the current top-20 in kenpom as of January 21:

Let's say that Marquette had a massive victory that moved their Adjusted Efficiency Margin up 3.0 points. Looking at the AdjEM column, that would push them to 24.22, which would take them from #17 to #9, an 8-spot jump (tied with Illinois). However, if #2 Purdue were to do the same thing and move their AdjEM from 30.25 to 33.25, they would still be ranked #2 because the gap at the top is that much wider. If you go further down the rankings, that 3.0 difference makes for even wider gaps. If Brian Wardle's #75 Bradley (10.99 AdjEM) bumped up to 13.99, they would jump 25-spots. It's even more stark in the middle of the rankings, where #195 Northern Colorado (-2.44 AdjEM) would skyrocket 42 spots to #153 if they saw a 3.0 bump to 0.56.

With kenpom, we see those differences. But with NET, while those numbers exist, they are hidden so we only see the ranking. That's how this past weekend you could see Creighton win by 3 at #56 Seton Hall and move up 5 spots from 16 to 11 while Marquette won by 1 at #36 St. John's and stay the same at #17. While we don't see a rank change, behind the scenes, the odds are both teams moved a similar amount in terms of their hidden rating, but because of gaps like we see above, the same movement that pushed Creighton up 5 spots kept Marquette in the same place. In addition, NET is influenced by the teams around you, so if Creighton moved past 5 teams but 3 of them lost that day while 2 didn't play, it was easier for the team that started a little bit ahead to make a big move while a comparable move didn't have a similar impact.

What are the takeaways? First, NET does not correlate to the S-Curve or Seeding, so don't overstate its importance. Second, the NET of your opponents is far more important than your own because it will determine what quadrants your wins and losses are, which actually does impact seeding. Third, don't pay close attention to the movements because while you might see a rank change, that doesn't give you context of the associate rating change or what happened to the teams around you.

Enough about the NET, let's get on with where we stand today:

Multibid Leagues

Big 12: 10

SEC: 8

Big East: 6

Big 10: 6

Mountain West: 5

ACC: 4

Pac-12: 3

American: 2

A Good Run of Bad Luck

At the risk of getting an “OK Boomer” from the 30 and under crowd I’m going to a semi-obscure mid-90s reference as the entry point to this blog post. 

The early 90s was the start of the “hey this IP worked 20-30 years ago we should rework it and cash in on those sweet, sweet nostalgia bucks” which is why Richard Donner (Superman, Goonies, Lethal Weapon series) ended up directing a movie called Maverick which was a remake of a late 50s black and white show of the same title. The movie stars Mel Gibson (peak his movie making but pre-his being notably insane), Jodie Foster, James Gardner, Graham Greene, Alfred Molina, James Colburn, and a Danny Glover cameo. It’s silly and not exactly Oscar bait, but it’s fun in a way only the 90s can be. The point of all this is that Maverick is a card shark and a con man who’s trying to scrape together enough money to get into a big poker tournament. Now before you walk away thinking this is a blog about “Phil ‘members things”, the point is that for the majority of the movie you don’t know whether Maverick has a plan, is he falling victim to bad luck, is the con man getting conned, etc. In fact, there’s a song for the movie by Clint Black that is where I got the title for the blog that’s all about what happens when your luck turns bad. And that, my friends, is what brings us to the meat of the article. We find ourselves at the point of the Marquette season where #mubb folks are wondering if the team has been figured out, maybe Shaka is a long con, teams are packing the paint, or we just really miss OMax. All reasonable takes worth examination, but I think the real culprit is….we’ve had a good run of bad luck.

By any measure that counts (wins and losses, shooting percentage), Marquette has struggled since early December. They are 6-4 in that stretch and are shooting 44% overall, 55% from 2 and 30% from 3. Compare that to last season when 95% of this roster shot 46/58/35 respectively. In the last month and a half it's safe to say the team has left points on the court compared to what they are capable of. The question is what is the cause of this? Rationally, we want there to be a tangible reason something isn't working because generally speaking people don't want to believe in things like ghosts (shouts to Lazar Hayward) or bad luck because it's not something you can do anything about. That means there HAS to be something more than Marquette has had bad shooting luck but I think that's exactly what we're looking at. The offensive process is good to great, it's just bad luck/outcomes that have cost us some games of late. Let's dig into the data that I think backs up the conclusion. 

The internet is a wonderful and scary place and nestled within it is a website called Synergy Sports that friend of the blog, Paint Touches, often references. The tl;dr explanation for Synergy is that it’s a website hosting basketball data that uses traditional box scores as well as analysis of game tape (human and automated) to develop advanced analytics giving you deeper insight into the game. One of the key elements that Synergy provides is the classification of shots taken: was that a mid-range or a runner, how many shots did my team take at the rim, long 3 or naw, and was that 3 guarded or unguarded? Why this feature of Synergy is key is that Marquette specifically has a philosophy around what kind of shots the team should be taking. Shaka Smart and Nevada Smith have spoken in the past about MU's offense having shots categorized into three tiers: Tier 1 is shots at the rim and unguarded 3s(take these whenever possible), Tier 2 is guarded 3s and runners(think Oso push shots), and Tier 3 is mid-range jumpers, hook shots, etc. It's not that MU can never take a Tier 3 but it is seriously frowned upon and if you take it I bet you are STRONGLY encouraged to make it. With that background in mind, let’s take a look at a couple of “what is wrong” hypothesis that have been floated

Teams are forcing Marquette to play slower

As the theory goes, Marquette is a fast-paced team and when teams limit possessions overall MU can’t generate enough offense to be successful. Here’s where we’re going to refer to data from Synergy first. I pulled the raw shooting classification numbers, including the total number of attempts for each game of the season:

 

 

 

Keep in mind this is shots taken so it excludes any FTs taken as a result of 7+ team fouls but we’ll use it as a metaphor for the offense as a whole. Marquette has averaged a shade over 62 shot attempts per game. Marquette’s record in games taking 63 shots or better:

        7-2 with the loss coming at Seton Hall and Butler

Record when taking less than 62 shots a game:

        5-3 with the losses being at Providence, at Wisconsin, and Purdue

OK, so nothing conclusive jumps out there. Marquette has lost with and without a lot of shot generation. Some other observations from this data:

1. Marquette generated a TON of shots against Butler (more on this later) 

2. Marquette hit a lull in shot generation in the @Wisconsin through @Providence games by taking less than 60 shots in each of those games which was the start of our ride on the struggle bus. However, Marquette generated it's fewest shots against both UCLA and St Thomas (52) so even if you argue that Marquette can be slowed down they can still be efficient and "Win Anyway". Additionally the volume of shots at the rim was largely unchanged.

3. The lull coincides with the first in a string of injuries for the team (Stevie Mitchell) so there may be more correlation between pace of play and player availability than there is other teams deliberately slowing the pace.

Packing the Paint

Now let's look at it as a percentage for each shot classification for the season (# of shots/# of total attempts):

 

 

 

What we’re looking for here is are there any significant changes in the amount (%) of shots being taken at the rim, significant move from guarded to unguarded 3s, and/or increase in number of runners taken. What jumps out to me here is that in the last 10 games there aren't hugely obvious variances from what we've seen all season in terms of what looks the offense is generating/taking. 12-19% of their shots are unguarded 3s and 40+% of their shots are at the rim. Two games do stand out: Providence had a season low in unguarded 3s by a long shot and Bucky gave us a large percentage of unguarded 3s and took away at the rim shots. More on Providence later, but that Bucky result stands out as an indicator that Gard said "hey shoot 3s with our cold gym and weird ball, we're not letting you go to the rim" and it paid off. But if teams as a whole are packing the paint in the last 10 games it doesn't seem to bear out in the shots that Marquette is generating. Plus some of the games where MU had the fewest at the rim shots (Texas, Kansas, UCLA, Creighton) Marquette is winning anyway.

If teams are packing the paint as a general rule, they aren’t very good at it.

“Figured Out”

 If we group shots based on tier and look at it for all of last season, the beginning of this season, and the last 10 games this is what that looks like:

 

 

First of all, holy cats did the offense know what the heck it was doing to start the season. Yes there's buy games in there but the schedule strength wasn't that appreciably different as the average opponent KenPom ranking in the first 7 was 93 and the last 10 was 73 (thanks Mick Cronin for dragging it down for everyone, you really are the worst). Second of all, yes from a shot selection standpoint the team has come back to earth somewhat but they are still at the same pace as last year for great shots and have converted a fair number of their bad shots into good ones (all without OMax I might add).

Let’s look at the game-by-game shot “quality”:

 

 

 

 

 

What stands out here is that while there is variation in Tier 1 shots (great) coming during loses and close wins, those shots are by and large being converted into Tier 2 shots (good). In fact, Texas was the game where our shot selection was the "worst" on the season whereas our shot selection was solid against Purdue, Butler, and Seton Hall and resulted in a loss. The point being, if teams have figured out Marquette's offense it’s not consistently figured out and really only at the margins in that we take a few less great shots and a few more just good shots. Look at those tier 3 numbers, even in the last 10 games the team has significantly improved on taking good shots instead of bad ones.

 

Wrong shooters shooting

The next argument is "well Phil, you silly, teams are sagging off bad shooters", ok well, I have a chart for that too:

 

 

 

This chart breaks down who is taking 3s regardless of "type". Prior to December Tyler, Kam, and Jopwagon(David) were taking 52.3% of the 3s but in the last 10 games they are taking 63.4%! And that's with Ben Gold more than doubling the 3s he’s taken this season in the last 10 games (33 out of 51 taken). So in the first 7 games Marquette was taking more tier 1 shots but they were generally coming from our less capable shooters and in the last 10 games when we've thought the team isn't playing well they are not only outstripping last seasons shot selection but are also significantly increasing the amount of 3s that our best shooters are taking....that should be an ideal outcome but it clearly isn't!

 All of this is really just a long throat clearing to say, I don't think the offense has been figured out as they are still taking the shots they want and with who they want.

 

OK Smart Guy, What Is The Problem

 

Let's get to the part where I Perry Mason a point that blows your mind......remember all those unguarded 3s and shots at the rim they are generating as part of tier 1 shots? Whadya think Marquette is shooting on those on a game by game basis?

 

 

 

 

 

Stare at that in all of it's HP Lovecraftian glory. On 2s, Marquette has not been shooting well during key games in the last 10 like Providence and Butler but generally as well. Last season they shot 55% from 2 and during this stretch, 4 out of the 10 games they shot under that mark (and went 1-3 in those games). They generated shots at the rim (3 out of 4 were at or above season average) but they simply did not make them at a high enough rate.

When it comes to unguarded 3s however, its not a case of Marquette not shooting well during the swoon, they just flat out can't shoot unguarded 3s except when they are playing Texas! For a little context, we go back to Synergy where they conveniently allow me to search team's shooting percentage based on unguarded shots. The median team (181 out of 362) in NCAA Division 1 basketball this season is shooting unguarded 3s at a 37.5% clip. Marquette hit or exceeded that rate just 4 times all season. Marquette shot 3s last year at a 35.3% clip and they hit or exceeded that rate just 5 times all season. Overall, Marquette is shooting a paltry 33% on unguarded 3s and that's held aloft by Shaka's blood feud against Texas, without that game it drops to 31%! I'm presuming you want to know where Marquette ranks this season out of 362 Division 1 teams since you've made it this far in my rambling.......

308

I put that in large font so it would really pop. Marquette has been inexplicably bad at shooting unguarded 3s this season! 3-point defense is often thought of as containing significant luck because so much can depend on the shot, rims, the ball, etc. Now the whole point of unguarded shots is that there is no defense; it's no different than putting shots up in the gym after practice, so a make/miss becomes almost entirely skill/luck. Even Steph Curry has some shooting variance and gets slumpy at times but 31% on unguarded 3s is just cray cray. There is no way teams have figured out how to guard us into ignominy on unguarded 3s, it’s just not a thing

 

 

To start to bring this to a close, let’s revisit a couple of the "more on that later” from earlier cause it is now very much later. First, that Butler game should go directly into the Basketball Infamy Hall of Fame. Given what Marquette did on both ends of the floor (season best 70% of tier 1 shots, most TOs on D, 24% of shots are unguarded 3s) they should have won that game by a million. But instead they shot 50% from 2 and 17% from 3…..like, sometimes basketball just sucks ya know. Second, the Providence game stands out as maybe a game where the opponent outclasses Marquette as opposed to it shooting itself in the foot. In that game Providence forced MU to take a season low amount of tier 1 shots and outside of Texas (LULZ) forced Marquette into the highest volume of bad shots. Some of that might have been the physicality and poor officiating (Win Anyway) but there is a non-zero chance Kim English has Shaka figured out which would have been an impossible sentence to imagine coming into the season. Hopefully it's non-repeatable with Bryce Hopkins out for the season, but it's something to keep an eye on.

 OK, I know this blog has taken forever to get here but let's get to the conclusion phase. I think we've walked through the process part of the Marquette experience, what they are trying to do, and validating the process is working. There’s a game or two where Marquette got away from it but it’s not wholesale or some sort of coaching blind spot being exposed. If the offense is doing what it wants and we’re getting the ball in the hands of the folks we want, the only thing left is luck. Just to show you the impact of unguarded 3s of which variance is almost exclusively luck, let’s look at every game this season where Marquette shot less than 35.3% on unguarded 3s (their overall 3pt% last season) and assume a world where they actually got to that rate. This is very conservative since the median team 3pt% on unguarded is 37.5%s. If we adjust the score by "giving" Marquette extra based only on the unguarded 3 shooting result, this is what the season would look like:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The big takeaway is Marquette would win the Butler and @Seton Hall games and get in spitting distance of Wisconsin (which would strengthen my argument that had Jeff Anderson not pulled his pants down on national TV for calling a foul on Jopwagon when the Badger he was guarding forgot how to walk for a couple of seconds, MU wins that game but I digress) and we'd all feel better with 14 wins now right? What if MU got to 40% on unguarded 3s (top 100 unguarded rate):

 

 

 

 

So we beat Bucky as well, cool.

 

Bottom line, if we are at all less unlucky our record is even better than it is now and the only losses where Marquette was clearly outplayed were Purdue, @Wisconsin and @Providence, I can definitely live with that. No guarantee our luck turns or we "positively regress" to the mean, but it also means we haven’t been figured out which would be way worse IMO. You know what else is unlucky? We've had significant injuries to 3 key players in the rotation. So yes, they've struggled some in the last 10 games but between shooting and injury luck is that really a surprise?

 I get it, as my father would say(who speaks 95% of the time in colloquialisms) "if wishes were horses, beggars would ride", you might say this doesn't matter because we can't change anything. That's of course correct, but also the whole point is that Marquette, no matter how frustrating or how much you might be changing expectations, is very much the result of misfortune as opposed to anything “wrong”. It’s a keep the faith sort of situation. Likely the team will see if the law of probability bends back in our favor. As Clint Black sings:

 "Til it's time for a windfall and not a single minute too soon
I've been too long overdue, now I'm gonna shoot the moon
I'd bet it all on a good run of bad luck"

 

We just gotta keep betting on that luck to turn.

 

 

 

 

We thought we'd put the therapy coach away, but now we're burning it

Well this turned out to be a no-good, terrible, unbelievable week for you #mubb team. We kick it off by getting into what in the hell is going on here post-Butler. We then also discuss the very disappointing Sean Jones news. To give folks a chance to vent and problem solve we took a look at what you folks thought is wrong and decided whether we agree or not. After a WHILE we then turn to the week ahead to decide if this is the week they can turn it around. Enjoy! https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/5w26z5/ScrambledEggs_Editted_101324.mp3

Bracketology: First Look at 2024

Marquette celebrates the 2023 announcement of their 2-seed 

Photo Credit: JS Online

Today we have our first projected look at the 2024 NCAA Tournament field. Typically this comes at the end of December, but we gave it a little more time to breathe this year, though it didn't help much. A few thoughts on the current bracket:

• Regarding Marquette: They currently sit as the last 3-seed. While some losses have piled up, they have more Q1A wins than the 4 teams on the 4-seed line combined. Had we done this a week ago, they would've been on the 2-line and had we done it a month ago, they may have been a 1-seed, so this is a team going in the wrong direction. For now, they are still a 3-seed, but they need conference play to start matching their non-con performance to stay there.
• The Circles of Crap: There are two groups that strike me as circles of crap. They are teams that have the metrics to warrant solid placement, but no real results to back it up. Baylor, Duke, Auburn, San Diego State, and BYU all look good on paper, but their signature wins either do not exist or are against each other. Further down, the Big 12 has its own circle with BYU, Texas Tech, Cincinnati, and Texas. The last three in particular only are in the field because they have wins over other teams in this group. I'm not sure how deserving any of them are.
• Where the Field Falls Apart: Once you get to the 6-line, the quality is very questionable. FAU has some excellent wins, but also some egregious losses. Memphis looked good a month ago, but their best wins are against teams who have fallen on their faces and while they earned wins against Quadrant 3 & 4 opponents, they weren't exactly convincing in doing so. BYU and Alabama have some incredible metric numbers, but very little in the resume to warrant being in the field, much less this high. They had to go somewhere, so this was where the darts started getting thrown against the wall.
• The Bubble: I think there's a case for inclusion or exclusion that starts at Texas Tech and continues to Miami. 17 teams for 11 spots was ultimately what the field came down to. Resume scores and quality wins were ultimately what got teams spots in the field.
• Teams to Watch: Dayton lost out on a 1-seed when the 2020 Tournament was cancelled, but they have a similar resume this year and if they can run the table in a weak A-10 could move up into that territory again. St. John's is a team we were high on in the preseason and is moving up the seed lines. If they can be the top-3 Big East team we projected them as, this could be a protected seed come March. On the bubble, Gonzaga is not only outside the field but outside the first 8 teams out as well. We would have them as a 4-seed in the NIT today. They've avoided bad losses, but don't have any quality wins at the moment. Everyone will be watching their trip to Kentucky in February, but they close their season with two road games at San Francisco and St. Mary's, both of which will likely be Quadrant 1 games. If the Zags close the season hot, they could still sneak into the field.

Here's the current Tournament Field, S-Curve, and Bids by Conference:

 

Big 12: 9

SEC: 8

Big East: 8

Big 10: 6

Mountain West: 5

ACC: 3

Pac-12: 3

American: 2

We thought we'd put the therapy couch away, guess not

Welp, that did not go as expected. #ScrambledEggs is back to talk about a disappointing performance at Seton Hall and talk about how much concern we have for expectations. We also look ahead to the Butler game, thankfully at home, which should bode well for Marquette. It may not have been the week we wanted but damn it, we're gonna enjoy this next week if it kills us. https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/zfczbm/ScrambledEggs_Editted_10724.mp3

Last time we can say happy new year

We've got Larry David references, game commentary, projections for the rest of the season, and other such nonsense. Welcome to the meat of Marquette's schedule and the end of holiday season. We pod about the result of the Creighton game, if anything has changed in how we view this team, and what we think might happen against Seton Hall in New Jersey. Enjoy! https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/uevcac/ScrambledEggs_Editted_10224.mp3

Is it a crisis or a bump?

It's the holiday season and it seems #mubb is in the holiday spirit by giving away success. We catch up on the last couple of games but especially on the road result to start Big East play. We talk through whether or not MU has been "figured out", whether we should adjust lofty expectations, and how recoverable things are. We wanted to make sure to get this out to you as our holiday episode so we try to have fun, we hope you do too as well as a same and happy Christmas. Enjoy! https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/qfzut3/ScrambledEggs_Editted_122023.mp3

This past weeks sponsor was Mollywhomping

Well that was an interesting "buy game" week huh? #mubb had a great week against some name brands and it was awesome. We talk through the Texas game, Tyler Kolek's latest curse word hilarity, and the impact of the win. We then talk Notre Dame beat down and briefly discuss the one game this week. Lastly we take some crowd sourced questions to talk about Jopwagon, Freshmen, and landmines on the schedule ahead. Enjoy! https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/iu3mkm/ScrambledEggs_Editted_121023.mp3

Sit on the couch right there, let's talk through this

Welp, definitely not how we thought that game would go. Welcome back #mubb, we hit a bit of a snag. We talk about the Wisconsin result and whether it tells us anything about the season as a whole. We also talk about another tough week to come with a top 30 Texas team and a rivalry in Notre Dame on the docket this week. Let's get right and we hope you enjoy! https://mcdn.podbean.com/mf/web/4tiwnt/ScrambledEggs_Editted.mp3