Wisconsin men’s basketball: what does their NCAA Tournament resume look like?

While the Wisconsin Badgers men’s basketball team has steadily fallen down the AP rankings over the past few weeks, most of the analytics sites remain high on the Badgers and think they are close to being a top-10 team. Let’s take a quick look at where Wisconsin is ranked by these various formulae and see if we can get some positive feelings brewing for the rest of the season.

First, the basics: the Badgers are 14-6 overall and 8-5 in the Big Ten. They are ranked No. 21 in the most recent AP Poll and the most recent Coaches Poll and are No. 4 in the conference. Also, here is an in-depth explainer on how these efficiency ratings are calculated, if you’re so inclined. However, the basic explanation is that it is points scored or points allowed per 100 possessions.

• KenPom: No. 11 AdjEM 23.24, No. 24 AdjO 112.6, No. 9 AdjD 89.4

AdjEM: the efficiency margin is the difference between the offensive efficiency and defensive efficiency

• T-Rank: No. 10 BARTHAG .9297, No. 23 AdjOE 112.4, No. 10 AdjDE 89.8

BARTHAG: is Torvik’s power rating, or, the chance of beating an average D1 team

• EvanMiya: No. 11 BPR 62.6, No. 24 OBPR 29.6, No. 6 DBPR 33.0

OBPR: Offensive Bayesian Performance Rating reflects a team’s true offensive efficiency. A higher rating is better.

DBPR: Defensive Bayesian Performance Rating reflects a team’s true defensive efficiency. A higher rating is better.

BPR: Bayesian Performance Rating is the sum of a team’s OBPR and DBPR. This rating is the ultimate measure of a team’s overall strength. A higher rating is better.

Thankfully, the NCAA Selection Committee no longer uses RPI to evaluate teams, so we won’t even mention it ever again on this site...except to disparage it. The new rankings system that they use is called NET and it debuted ahead of the 2018-19 season. They made a few tweaks to the system before this season, which you can read about here. Here is a handy graphic that explains how they come to their ratings.

The NET ratings are updated daily and as of Wednesday morning, Feb. 10 at 7:50 a.m. CST the Badgers are ranked No. 18. They are 8-6 against Quad 1 and Quad 2 opponents, although only 3-4 against Quad 1 by itself.

(Quad 1 includes home games against teams in the top 30 of NET, neutral-site games against the top 50 and road games against the top 75. Quad 2 includes home games against teams ranked Nos. 31-75 in NET, neutral-site games against teams ranked Nos. 51-100 and road games against teams ranked Nos. 76-135.)

Another valuable tool to see how teams stack up heading into March is WAB, or Wins Above Bubble. You can find WAB in the last column of Torvik’s homepage and it is a calculation of how your average bubble team would have done against your team’s schedule and then compares that to your team’s actual record.

For example: Wisconsin is 14-6 and their WAB is 3.0; which means an average bubble team would be expected to go 11-9 against UW’s schedule this year so Wisconsin is doing pretty well and is nowhere near the bubble.