Villanova Basketball’s Quad Goals: Evaluating Nova’s NCAA Tournament Resume (Dec. 3)

It’s time for another installment of Villanova’s Quad Goals, our ongoing series in which we track the Wildcats’ NCAA Tournament Resume. If you need a refresher on the NET ratings or the Quad System, check out our previous article for additional details.

Since the initial drop of the Net Rankings, things have quieted down a bit. The Top 5 (Virginia, Michigan, Gonzaga, Duke, and Texas Tech), look a lot more reasonable. It turns out that if you give a metric that’s built to review an entire season some time, it starts looking the way it should! I’m not saying the NET is a perfect system, but it is better than the RPI and will continue to improve its accuracy as we get closer to the season.

And if the NET is getting more accurate, that’s great news for Villanova. The Wildcats jumped up a spot to #37 since their most recent victory over La Salle. No, they weren’t ever going make any significant jump for beating a now eight loss team, but not moving down for playing poor competition is a good sign. To put it in perspective, Furman has continued to slide down the NET. This despite being undefeated and now ranked in the AP Poll for the first time in school history. Go figure.

But anyway, back to Villanova’s Quad.

Villanova’s Quad Goals

Things are moving in the right direction for Villanova. They got a win, and their NET ranking improved. But possibly more important, their number of Q1 games jumped up as well.

The full schedule breakdown is below, but here are a few takeaways from the latest update:

• I added a new column to the schedule breakdown: Move Potential. These are any opponents whose NET ranking are within 15 spots of moving up or down a quadrant. Right now, the Wildcats have 5 opponents that could rise up to Q1 (UConn, vs St. John’s, at Georgetown, vs Marquette, at Seton Hall) and just 3 that could fall out of Q1 (FSU, at DePaul, at Xavier). These Q1 opportunities, specifically wins, seem to be the biggest contributing factor from the ranking system to a team’s NCAA Tournament seed.
• Even in a down year, the Big East isn’t doing too bad in the NET. Outside of Providence (101), all other Big East teams are inside the Top 100. The Big 10 the only other major conference that has all of its teams ranked in the Top 100, so that would put the Big East second as a whole.
• While Big 5 teams are on the rise in the NET, they likely won’t contribute any Q1 opportunities this season. The closest will likely be Temple at home (currently Q2) or at Penn (currently Q3).
• Villanova gained two Q1 games since this time last week. The better the Big East can do before conference play starts, the more likely those will be to hold.