Just for talking purposes, Stanford's loss at Miami last night dropped them to #77 in NET, which put our win over them into the Q2 category. Putting our Q1 record at 8-1 currently. Coincidentally, SMU is up to #31, so if/when they gain another spot, our home win over them will become a Q1 win.
NCAA NET Rankings, Resumes
- Thread starter JasonEvans
- Start date
Duke of Destiny
Member
As great as Man-Man was in his role, he was someone who needed to be spoon fed to score. Pat also wasn’t getting consistent minutes. So, it’s really going from no dominant, inside scoring presence to two of them.
Too soon but I agree. Free throws have been maddening at times this season and if we could shoot them we’d be undefeated. We just have to hope we “make them when we need them,” a la Shaq.
Cam Boozer is a much more well-rounded player than Antawn Jamison was. Jamison moved very well without the ball, but he famously spent so little time with the ball in his hands because other than shoot he couldn’t do much with it. Cam is a much better ball handler and passer than Jamison ever was.
JasonEvans
Host, The Duke Basketball Roundup
We can admire excellence even when we see it in our rivals. Jamison had a game against Duke where he scored 35 points and only had the ball in his hands for 53 total seconds. That's outrageous.
I could post a video... but I won't.
I could post a video... but I won't.
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
He torched my high school team for 50 or something back in Charlotte.
I remember the game you reference. Sportscenter broke down each time he touched the ball and ran a clock.
Was Elton Brand not playing? How did that happen?
He had a very quick release, and shot the ball from a lot of different angles. He would get the ball and almost immediately flip it up towards the basket in some kinda way. And he was really good at it. Lots of them went in.
MChambers
Member
Brand was out most of the season with a broken foot. He came back for the UNC game in Durham, so he missed the game in Chapel Hill.
Mtn.Devil.91.92.01.10.15
Member
I thought there was something along those lines
Duke of Destiny
Member
So many great Duke teams have dealt with midseason injuries to star players. Trying to integrate them back in hasn’t always worked perfectly either. It’s pretty amazing they did as well as they did in 1998 given the circumstances.
Dr. Maturin
Member
This is an interesting question. I've thought the strength of the 2026 team is that it has a very high floor. I'm not sure how high the ceiling is, but the Louisville game showed some real promise. I don't think this squad has as much raw talent as the 2025 version, and I think we're more reliant on our star player.
One measure of reliability is the Torvik game score. Through the end of January, the 2025 team had 6 game scores below 95. This year's team has just 4 such games. Granted, the off nights were pretty scattered for the 2025 team, while the 2026 team had a pretty clear 4-game slump. Outside that stretch, Duke has registered a game score of 94 or better in every contest. That's remarkably consistent.
I guess the question is, is that four-game stretch something we should worry about? I'm inclined to think not. The Lipscomb game was clearly about sloppiness after exams - we haven't seen that kind of carelessness with the ball the rest of the season. The Texas Tech game had a bad ending, but wasn't a bad performance on balance. The GT/FSU games were more about our opponent getting hot from 3, while Jon tinkered with some tactics (zone defense, Cayden in the starting lineup). Jon has moved on from those tactics and we've returned to being a consistently good team. If anything, the only "red flag" was the way FSU spread us out defensively with shooters. As CDU mentioned above, teams that can make our bigs guard in space can give us trouble. If we face a more talented version of FSU, that might be a tough matchup. However, it's not like we're helpless. Jon has recently started having our bigs hedge ballscreens more, which has been pretty effective. The way we defended Louisville gives me hope that our bigs' footspeed may only be a minor matchup issue.
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SkyBrickey
Member
Very odd. Arizona and Michigan are ahead of us in both the efficiency metrics and Torvik's WAB. Arizona is undefeated. The NET continues to be a giant mystery.
NET caps gaudy wins more heavily than most. That knocks down michigan and arizona more than us.
brevity
Member
Between Sunday and Monday, Michigan fell from #1 to #3, even though they last played on Friday, and beat Michigan State on the road by 12 points. (Duke moved up from #2 to #1, while Arizona rose from #3 to #2.)
So what happened on Sunday? Well, Nebraska lost to Illinois, and subsequently fell 3 spots today, from #7 to #10. Michigan just beat Nebraska last week, and has yet to play Illinois.
I'm not sure why a Nebraska loss would affect Michigan that much, but I don't see another easy explanation. Their NET breakdown (8-0 in Quad 1, 7-1 in Quad 2, 4-0 in Quad 3, 1-0 in Quad 4) did not change from yesterday to today.
Ultimately, the main thing this seems to be telling us that the differences between the top 3 teams are minuscule, and subject to daily changes. Here are the NET rankings for the last 4 mornings.
Friday: #1 Arizona, #2 Duke, #3 Michigan
Saturday: #1 Arizona, #2 Michigan, #3 Duke
Sunday: #1 Michigan, #2 Duke, #3 Arizona
Monday: #1 Duke, #2 Arizona, #3 Michigan
duketaylor
Member
That's just bizarre!!
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A lot more happened than just the Nebraska-Illinois game. You appear to be looking only at the games that affected Michigan. But, for example, Florida destroyed Alabama, which strengthened Duke's and Arizona's resumes. Another game in the mix is Maryland (who Michigan struggled against before eventually pulling away) got trounced at home by Purdue, which probably also hurt Michigan a bit. Ditto TCU getting blasted by Colorado.
There were a lot of games played on Sunday, and each had an indirect effect on the rankings. But I'd venture that Florida game is probably the biggest driver of the movement between those 3 teams based on Sunday's games, followed by the TCU and Maryland blowouts.
This is almost certainly the more important answer. Like with Torvik and KenPom, looking at the exact number ranking at any given time is less relevant than looking at the metric that determines said ranking.
Of course, the NET doesn't present said metric. But then again the NET doesn't decide seeding (just serves as a tool for measuring the quality of one's opponents), so I guess that's okay.
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Pretty hard to answer, as it depends on all the other teams near the top of the rankings as well.
