In the world of basketball, numbers have taken over. Many teams have started to take a mathematical approach, understanding the value in points per possession, what specific shots and actions correlate to the highest value of points in each possession, and letting the numbers work out over 40 minutes. Over the course of the season, various services take into account many different metrics and rank them to help the NCAA tournament committee decide who gets in and which teams deserve higher seeds.
Before Tennessee travels to the plains of Auburn and Neville Arena to match up with former Volunteer coach Bruce Pearl, let’s see where Tennessee falls in many of the most impactful rankings.
Net Ranking: 4
The N.E.T. (NCAA Evaluation Tool) took over as the primary indicator for tournament seeding before the 2018-2019 basketball season. It emphasizes a team value index, as well as adjusted net efficiency. The Team Value Index is the strength of the opponent, the location of the game, and the result of the game. This is calculated for every game throughout the season. Adjusted net efficiency is your offensive efficiency (how many points a team would score in 100 possessions) minus defensive efficiency (how many points a team would allow in 100 possessions), and the strength of the opponent, along with the location of the game is taken into account, which makes it adjusted.
With this formula, every team in NCAA Division I basketball is ranked 1-364. However, the NCAA doesn’t just leave it at that. They make sure every game falls into one of four quadrants.
Tennessee’s quadrant 1 record: 6-2
For a contest to be qualified as a quadrant 1 Game, it must fall into one of the following scenarios:
- A home game against a team in the top 30 in the NET rankings.
- A neutral site game against a team in the top 50 in the NET rankings.
- An away game against a team in the top 75 in the NET rankings.
Tennessee’s quadrant 2 record: 1-0
For a contest to be qualified as a quadrant 2 Game, it must fall into one of the following scenarios:
- A home game against a team ranked 31-75 in the NET rankings.
- A neutral site game against a team ranked 51-100 in the NET rankings.
- An away game against a team ranked 76-135 in the NET rankings.
Tennessee’s quadrant 3 record: 3-0
For a contest to be qualified as a quadrant 3 Game, it must fall into one of the following scenarios:
- A home game against a team ranked 76-160 in the NET rankings.
- A neutral site game against a team ranked 101-200 in the NET rankings.
- An away game against a team ranked 136-240 in the NET rankings.
Tennessee’s quadrant 4 record: 7-0
For a contest to be qualified as a quadrant 4 Game, it must fall into one of the following scenarios:
- A home game against a team ranked 161-364 in the NET rankings.
- A neutral site game against a team ranked 201-364 in the NET rankings.
- An away game against a team ranked 241-364 in the NET rankings.
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KenPom ranking: 6
For more detail and clarity, many college basketball fanatics look to Ken Pomeroy’s website Kenpom.com. This shows where each team is ranked with his analytics, and details where each team stands for many different categories, including many statistics that are measured for the NET.
Adjusted offensive efficiency: 23rd
Tennessee’s adjusted offensive efficiency is 118.9 (meaning they would score 118.9 points per 100 possessions.) The difficulty of games is also factored into the equation. An adjusted offensive efficiency of 118.9 is good for 23rd in all of college basketball.
Adjusted defensive efficiency: 3rd
Tennessee’s adjusted defensive efficiency is 89.2 (89.2 points allowed per 100 possessions.) Once again, the difficulty of games throughout the season is factored into the equation. Tennessee’s adjusted defensive efficiency ranks the third highest in college basketball, behind Houston and Duke.
How KenPom ranks each team is through adjusted net efficiency only. With an adjusted net efficiency of 29.72, Tennessee is sixth in the country, behind
- Duke (36.71)
- Auburn (36.35)
- Houston (34.68)
- Iowa St. (30.87)
- Florida (29.76)
Two interesting metrics were found when looking at the numbers for Tennessee.
- Tennessee is ranked 334th in adjusted tempo, meaning they play at one of the slowest paces in the country. In a 40-minute game, they average 64.1 possessions.
- Tennessee’s strength of schedule ranks 51st in the country, but it is largely due to playing a weak non-conference schedule that ranks as the 222nd weakest in the country. Many say that playing a weak non-conference schedule largely helps your net ranking, as well as other metric rankings.
Tennessee will have a great opportunity on Saturday to improve their rankings when they travel to Auburn. The Tigers are a consensus top-five team in all rankings, and it will be a quadrant 1 matchup for both teams.