‘Help, I don’t understand the NET!’ What you need to know about NCAA’s rankings
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- NET ranks D-I teams using game results, net efficiency and opponent ratings.
- Quadrant ranges differ by men’s and women’s NET and assign value to wins.
- Selection committee uses NET plus predictive and results metrics to award at-large bids.
Welcome to conference play in the 2025-26 college basketball season!
As we inch ever-closer to March, it’s more likely than not that those of us knee-deep in college basketball are hearing more and more talk of the NET rankings.
They’re not the Associated Press Top 25, and they’re different from then KenPom or Bart Torvik rankings. The NET rankings, rather, are an NCAA rating system combining multiple metrics as a means of ranking every single Division I college basketball program — men’s and women’s — in order to put the best teams into the NCAA Tournaments come March.
The NET is a system oft-misunderstood by folks in and out of the know; Kenny Brooks made several comments last season — his first as Kentucky women’s basketball coach — about not understanding exactly how its order was determined. And he’s not alone.
Here’s a handy guide with what you need to know about one of the most misunderstood team-ranking systems.
What is the NET?
The NET exists in both men’s (beginning with the 2018-19 season) and women’s (beginning with the 2020-21 season) college basketball, but different metrics determine the two rankings. The NET rankings are just one of several components used to determine the NCAA Tournament fields.
Per the NCAA, the respective NET rankings for men’s and women’s data is powered by “a unique machine-learning model trained exclusively on its own historical data.” Meaning that the men’s model only uses historical data from men’s college basketball, and the women’s model uses exclusively historical data from women’s college basketball.
What is the same between the men’s and women’s NET rankings, though, is that the evaluation tool releases its first iteration of each season in early December and is updated daily to reflect the results and changes of all games played.
According to NCAA guidelines, the NET rankings consider Team Value Index, or, “the strength of victories based on opponent and location,” and net efficiency, calculated by subtracting defensive efficiency from offensive efficiency. The resulting net efficiency is “adjusted to account for the strength of the opponent and the game location.”
That’s a lot of jargon, so let’s break it down.
In short: The NET rankings shift at the end of each day of games and use actual game results and information like the quality of wins or losses and homecourt advantages to try and rank every single Division I team in the country.
Easy enough, right? Now, let’s talk about Quadrants.
What is the NET quadrant system?
You’ve likely heard someone describe a victory as a “Quad 1 win,” to express that one team beat an opponent considered to be ranked among the best in the country.
Take Kentucky men’s basketball’s neutral-site victory over St. John’s on Dec. 20 in Atlanta. That, based on NET rankings and criteria (as of the morning of Jan. 6), qualifies as a Quadrant 1 win.
Or Kentucky women’s basketball’s Jan. 1 road win at LSU. That’s another example of a Quadrant 1 victory.
Similarly to how we don’t necessarily know how high a team’s ceiling is in December, the Quadrant definition of a win is fluid over the course of the NET rankings, once released.
A nonconference victory over a team could look and feel like a résumé-builder when the buzzer sounds, but may not carry the same weight once we see more from that team come late February.
The NET rankings dare to ask questions like “Are you losing games you should win?” And “Do you struggle on the road?” Or “How do you perform against high-level competition?”
Quadrant System Ranges
So, we’ve learned that a team’s individual NET ranking is always subject to change, from the ratings’ first release in December to the end of the season.
What isn’t subject to change (or at least not during each season), is the criteria used to determine a “Quadrant System Range,” against team rankings in the NET. The ranges are based on the quality of opponent in the NET rankings and where a game was played — at home, at a neutral site or in a true road environment.
The men’s Quadrant System Ranges:
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 161-365, neutral 201-365, away 241-365
So a home win against the 30th-ranked team in the NET is a Quad-1 win. So is a road win against the team ranked 75th. It’s the same concept in the women’s game, but the ranges are different.
The women’s Quadrant System Ranges:
Quadrant 1: Home 1-25, neutral 1-35, away 1-45
Quadrant 2: Home 26-55, neutral 36-63, away 46-80
Quadrant 3: Home 56-90, neutral 66-105, away 81-130
Quadrant 4: Home 91-363, neutral 106-363, away 131-363
In short: You want to win as many games as you can against Quadrant 1 and 2 teams and particularly avoid losses to teams classified in Quadrants 3 or 4. The worse a loss is, the more glaring it may be on a résumé at the end of the regular season. There is breathing room for a road loss, but winning on the road can be incredibly valuable, the higher an opponent is ranked.
Where is Kentucky in the NET rankings?
Remember how the rankings change daily? At this writing, Kentucky men’s basketball (9-5, 0-1 SEC) sits at No. 31 in the NET rankings; Kentucky women’s basketball (15-1, 2-0 SEC) is No. 7 in the NET rankings.
Let’s practice using Kentucky’s current standings in the men’s and women’s NET rankings.
If a team were to beat Kentucky men’s basketball at a neutral site or at Rupp Arena, it would count as a Quadrant-1 win because the Wildcats are ranked within the system ranges. However, since the UK men sit outside the NET’s top 30, any opponent that beat the Wildcats on its home floor would earn a Quadrant-2 win.
Regardless of where — at home, at a neutral site or at Memorial Coliseum — if a team were to defeat Kentucky women’s basketball, tt would count as a Quadrant-1 win because the Wildcats are ranked within the NET’s top 25.
Does the NET determine the NCAA Tournament field?
It’s a component, yes!
There’s only enough room in either tournament for 68 teams, and 31 of those teams each year automatically qualify for March Madness by winning their individual conference tournaments.
The remaining 37 at-large bids are, according to the NCAA, determined by “a combination of metrics and evaluation tools.”
When determining the men’s field, committee members — there are 12, each serving five-year term — consider the NET rankings and Quadrant results as well as what the NCAA lists as “results-based metrics.” Those include strength of record; KPI (the Kevin Pagula Index, named for its creator, which ranks team resumes by assigning a value to each individual game; and Wins Above Bubble, which compares wins a team has against its schedule to the record “a bubble team would expect to have against the same schedule.”
The men’s committee also uses what the NCAA labels as “predictive-based metrics,” such as Torvik and KenPom.
Key metrics for the women’s tournament committee also include Wins Above Bubble and NET ranking and other factors such as head-to-head results, strength of schedule, “bad” losses, common opponents and how a team has progressed from the start of the season.
