So why is our defensive efficiency (and not simply the margin of victory) being given as the reason our NET score went down?
We could have played the exact same defense but if Purdue misses say, 9 more FTs it would have been a 1 possession loss on the road to the NET 10 team, and I’m guessing our NET would have improved if that were the case.
Because the NET is a function of our Offensive Efficiency - Defensive Effenciency, Strength of Schedule, Home/Away, and W/L record adjusted for Opponent and Location.
Yesterday our SoS went up and our Efficiency went down. Obviously our unadjusted W/L record went down but it’s not clear how much that was mitigated by it being against the #10 NET team on the road.
We went backwards because - using the NET formula - the negatives were larger than the positives.
I don’t like the formula either. But it was agreed to by coaches and ADs. It‘s not something that an outsider imposed on them.
It’s also important to keep in mind that what we see are rankings, not absolute scores. It’s possible to improve your score but go down in the rankings if the teams behind you improve their scores by more than you did.