Based on almost every account from predictive analytics websites and NCAA-sanctioned sorting tools used to evaluate college basketball teams, in some ways, the Gonzaga Bulldogs stack up to the top teams in the country that are competing for a high seed in the NCAA Tournament.
Despite their omission from the AP Top 25 poll following back-to-back losses, the Zags (16-6, 7-2 WCC) are still hovering around the top 20 teams in the country according to credible rankings from KenPom (No. 10), Torvik (No. 16), Haslametrics (No. 13) and the all-important NET (12), which has been one of the NCAA Tournament selection committee’s main resources for seeding teams on Selection Sunday since it replaced the RPI system in 2018.
However, one data scientist is striving to change how fans, analysts and committees view the hierarchy of college basketball through a new way of evaluating a team’s quality of wins. Based on the metric’s initial returns, the …