NCAA announced the tournament will use the newly created NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET). It will take into account results, strength of schedule, location, scoring margin, offensive and defensive efficiency, and quality of wins and losses. Supposedly will be available around end of November or early December.

Game margin is capped at 10 which seems pointless to even use it as a measure and then set the threshold that low. It is nice that all games carry equal weight. So a win in December is as good as a win in March.

I imagine it will mirror or look similar to kenpom, sagarin, massey or the likes. I am sure this does not benefit the mid majors at all for working hard to get high RPI numbers. I think this will lend its hand to more majors playing each other early in the year to boost their own numbers for strength of schedules etc to help weed out the mid majors. Hope I am wrong, but I do not see this helping close the gap between the haves and have nots.

This is still a big change for the NCAA who has used the RPI as a measure since 1981. I wonder how simple it will be for the committee to not look at and use RPI at all

The question is how many non-NCAA websites will continue making the RPI. These websites sometimes disagree with each other, so two Selection Committee members could find different unofficial RPIs for Team X and not know that they found different results. In 2017-2018, the 75 teams in the top six conferences had an average RPI of 72.9 and an average Sagarin of 52.6, so I agree that using a measure more like the Sagarin will probably hurt mid-majors. If the Sagarin capped margin of victory at 10 those 75 teams might have had an average of 60 to 65. That's just speculation as Jeff Sagarin does not share his formula, but I think it's safe to say that capping margin of victory would have hurt those 75 teams.

My guess is that this new "tool" will be formulated to weigh heavily on the mediocre power programs so that the mid-majors won't be able to cry foul when they get screwed out of at-large bids.

I've always said that the only fair way to do the selections is to choose a formula, publish the formula well in advance so that teams can schedule accordingly, and then use the formula as a rule to select the 32+ at large bids. The way they do it now is a complete joke and has ruined the fun of the tournament for me. I barely watched any games last year.

There are 36 at-large bids including the First Four. I think they should take the top 27 NET teams that need at-large bids and let the Selection Committee choose the last 9 (25%). I don't think Turner (who had the Selection Show for the first time) would like it if the Selection Committee only did seeding, with anybody able to check the formula to know all the teams in advance.

So it was announced that the NET rankings are being changed again, but still kept quiet as to what exactly the ranking is. An article semi explaining the changes is below.

Update