Why are the NET Rankings underrating the Badgers?

I feel the need for a caveat at the beginning of this piece: I’m well aware that the NCAA’s NET Rankings in mid-February will not determine what line the Wisconsin Badgers are on in March. But they are a good guidepost for what the Committee thinks about Wisconsin right now, and that’s relevant.

Greg Gard’s squad currently sits at No. 33 in the NET rankings, which, to be blunt, seems low for two main reasons.

Wisconsin has been objectively better than some teams above them

I’m not going into a comparative analysis for every head-to-head gripe I have here, but one team from the Big Ten is a good example that I’ll lean on.

Advertisement

We need look no further than Iowa who, relative to Wisconsin, has the same overall record, inferior conference record, worse performance in both Q1 and Q2 games, zero top 30 NET wins, and an easier strength of schedule, yet preposterously sits at No. 27 in the NET, a full six spots (and TWO seed lines, 7th vs 9th) ahead of the Badgers.

In addition, Iowa has two bad losses: one to NET No. 86 Minnesota and another to NET No. 151 Maryland (!). Wisconsin’s worst losses are to NET No. 48 USC and NET No. 45 TCU. Spot the difference yet?

The Badgers have a robust troika of massive wins that Iowa can’t come close to sniffing (more on this in a moment), and zero bad losses, so there is really no way to explain why Iowa is ahead of Wisconsin in the NET beyond some weird built-in bias.

No team has a better package of elite wins than Wisconsin

While many college basketball teams have won big games this season, none have a better troika (@ Illinois, @ Michigan, Michigan State blowout) than Wisconsin does. Michigan and Illinois alone are each top seven NET teams (No. 1 and No. 5), and the Badgers beat both of them in their barns. That’s objectively unreal work for Gard’s crew.

Advertisement

Layer on a wire-to-wire home bludgeoning of Tom Izzo’s Spartans (now No. 15 in the NET but then No. 12), and Wisconsin has a handful of…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/why-net-rankings-underrating-badgers-203000486.html

Author :

Publish date : 2026-02-16 20:30:00

Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source.