NCAA adds Torvik rankings, wins above bubble to selection committee team sheet metrics

  • 07/12/2024 8:59 am in

The NCAA announced Thursday that it’s adding two new metrics to team sheets for the selection committee to utilize during the tournament selection process.

The metrics being added are Bart Torvik’s “T-Rank” and “wins above bubble.” The team sheets already included BPI and KenPom for predictive ratings and strength of record and KPI for results-based metrics in addition to the NET.

From the NCAA’s release:

The committee also spent considerable time discussing principles and procedures for selecting, seeding and bracketing teams, and affirmed that the 2025 championship will feature an automatic qualifier from each of the 31 conferences to go along with the best 37 at-large teams as determined by the committee. The evaluation of teams will be enhanced by the addition of two metrics as the committee voted to include the Torvik and Wins Against Bubble rankings on the team sheets.

“The committee has always valued different data points and metrics to assist with its evaluation process, and these two metrics have increasingly been referenced by members in recent years,” Dan Gavitt said. “Adding them to the team sheet ensures that all 12 members easily have access to this data. The Torvik rankings, along with BPI and KenPom, give the committee three predictive ratings, while the WAB, Strength of Record and KPI give them three results-based metrics, all of which, in addition to the NET, will be beneficial to the team evaluation process.”

For those unfamiliar, wins above the bubble are defined as “the difference in the number of wins a team has compared to the expected number of wins an average “bubble” team would earn against a given team’s schedule.”

Wins above bubble are listed on Torvik’s site. Torvik also lays out the foundation for the “T-Rank” in this blog post.

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