Each year, for the NCAA D1 Men’s Basketball Tournament, the bracketing of teams is selected by the NCAA Men’s Basketball Committee. Starting in 1981, the committee used the RPI rating as supplemental data. That’s going to change next season. The NCAA is going to adopt the ‘NCAA Evaluation Tool’ hereby referred too as NET.
NET will replace RPI for Men’s Basketball only for the 2018-19 season, the Women’s committee will continue to use the RPI.
According to the NCAA website, NET is based on:
- Game results
- Strength of schedule
- Game location
- Scoring margin
- Net offensive
- Defensive efficiency
- Quality of wins and losses
To develop NET, machine learning techniques were leveraged in gauging the validity of the new measurement.