Syracuse men’s basketball: Orange check in at #177 in initial NET Rankings

Despite a slow start for Cuse, matchups against some of the top teams in the NET Rankings will give the chance for a quick rise

The NCAA announced the publication of the first NET Rankings for the men’s basketball season. The Syracuse Orange (4-2) checked in as the 177th ranked team out of 364 D1 outfits.

The NET (NCAA Evaluation Tool) Rankings were first formed seven years ago as a more effective way to evaluate NCAA Basketball team’s eligibility for the March Madness Tournament.

The NET calculation formula is a complex system which “rewards teams for beating quality opponents, particularly away from home, as well as an adjusted net efficiency rating. The adjusted efficiency is a team’s net efficiency, adjusted for strength of opponent and location (home/away/neutral) across all games played.”

Last year, the NET Rankings famously shorted ACC teams for their poor non-conference performances, resulting in only five ACC teams making the tournament. Of course, if teams want the best shot of making the tournament, they will need to rank inside the top 68 or so teams in the NET Rankings to earn an at-large bid to March Madness.

The opening rankings did not shine favorably upon SU or the ACC, with only five teams inside the top 30 (Duke, Pitt, Clemson, UNC, Louisville). SMU, FSU, Cal, Stanford, NC State and Notre Dame also all featured inside the top 100.

Syracuse ranked as the third-worst team in the ACC on NET, ahead of only Miami and Virginia Tech.

SU’s poor NET ranking can largely be attributed to their easy schedule and lack of results away from home. The Orange have played four ‘Quad 4’ teams (the lowest tier of teams in the league). These games were all at home and constitute SU’s four wins this season, which do not serve to greatly boost SU’s net rankings.

Contrastingly, SU’s two losses this season come up against good teams away from home. To put the long story short, only winning at home against bad teams, as Cuse has, is not going to do much to boost your NET Rank.

Luckily for SU, their remaining schedule will give them plenty of cracks at top-tier opponents in a bid to boost their NET. The matchup tonight against the top-of-the-table Tennessee Volunteers will give SU a huge boost should they find a way to grab a road win against an elite side.

SU will also get 14 more cracks at current top-100 programs:

#4 Duke

#5 Pitt (Twice)

#18 Clemson

#23 Maryland

#26 UNC

#30 Louisville

#64 SMU

#67 Florida State

#78 Cal

#80 Stanford

#91 NC State

#97 Notre Dame (Twice)

One question that could stem from the current state of SU’s NET Ranking is: Why does Syracuse play so many bad teams at home?

This schedule organization has been the case for a long time as teams from in and around New York often opt to play at SU in the early season for the potential revenue that the JMA Wireless Dome can bring them. But with these low-quality wins over low-quality opponents, SU does not boost their ranking, and one slip-up could cost them a huge fall in the rankings (see Colgate in 21-22 and 22-23).

Conversely, SU’s ACC opponents, like UNC, have worse records but have played many more games against top-tier opponents and, therefore, still rank well above SU in the NET. The same can be said of SMU.

If Syracuse opted to test itself against better teams earlier in the season, this would help battle-test the team while also boosting their NET Ranking.

Although it is far too early to tell where SU will end up in the rankings, they have not done themselves many favors by setting up an easy non-conference schedule. The team will need to perform extremely well in its ACC matchups to make it back to the tournament, but only time will tell.