Image Credit: Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images

March Madness: How do NET rankings work in NCAA tournament selection?

NET rankings work for both the men's and women's basketball committees.

Image Credit: Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images

This year’s March Madness will kick off with Sunday Selection on March 16, and fans will witness a mouth-watering format. The single-elimination event will lead us to the NCAA Championship game on April 7.

68 teams will participate in 2025 March Madness, and all teams will be given a NET ranking based on efficiency, opponent quality and game location according to the NCAA. Here’s everything you need to know about NET.

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What is NET?

NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) is a vital sorting tool for evaluating teams for Selection Sunday. Every team gets ranked from the NCAA based on its performance and game location.

NCAA releases NET rankings each season in December due to demand from the NCAA membership, media and fans. However, we get to know the most accurate numbers in March. NET doesn’t require any data from previous seasons or preseason rankings.

How NET rankings work?

NET rankings work for both the men’s and women’s basketball committees so they can evaluate teams for March Madness. They sort all teams into four quadrants, using home, away and neutral game results.

Quadrant 1: Home (1-30), Neutral (1-50), Away (1-75)
Quadrant 2: Home (31-75), Neutral (51-100), Away (76-135)
Quadrant 3: Home (76-160), Neutral (101-200), Away (136-240)
Quadrant 4: Home (161-353), Neutral (201-353), Away (241-353)

Wins and losses are also weighted differently depending on the location. As per the NCAA, road wins are valued more than neutral-site wins and neutral-site wins are valued more than home wins. In both cases, opponent ranking plays a big role. If a team beats a better-ranked side, it’s automatically an advantage. Winning against the 15th-ranked team in the NET is valued more than winning against the 35th-ranked team.

Certain traditional metrics like game date, winning percentage and scoring margin are not included in NET rankings.

Meanwhile, NET rankings are not the major tool for the basketball committees to evaluate teams. Committees consider additional metrics and evaluation tools to determine a team’s fate in March Madness.

Why NCAA replaced RPI with NET?

RPI is known as the Rating Percentage Index, which was used to evaluate teams for NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees. It was the main ranking system, which started in 1981. NCAA wanted a fair and comprehensive system for evaluating teams.

RPI works on these three components:

Team’s winning percentage
Average opponents’ winning percentage
Average opponents’ opponents’ winning percentage

NCAA introduced NET rankings in the 2018-19 season for men’s basketball and the 2020-21 season for women’s basketball, replacing RPI. They also partnered with basketball analytics experts and Google Cloud to make NET a better and improved tool.

Image Credit: Robert Hanashiro-Imagn Images

March Madness

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Gulshan Sharma

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A native of Jaipur, Rajasthan, journalist, and a complete soccer and basketball fan, he found the huge interest with basketball by watching videos of Allen Iverson and Tony Parker, but fell head over heels in love with the sport during the Warriors’ championship era (2015-2018). A sports game addict since his late PS1, he’s also passionate about the Eagles, Inter Miami and the Fever. He’s fortunate to have seen all his favorite teams win championships. He also has a special love for cricket and football (soccer), where he is a fan of Royal Challengers Bangalore and Barcelona.