Last year Torvik's NET Forecast was remarkably accurate. In the preseason he ranked ECU 173rd with 14 wins and they finished 15-15 with a 183 NET. Even in January when ECU was sitting at 10-3 with a fluff record it was still only projecting around 150 NET with 18 wins. The wins agitated between 14 to a 17 win projection and around 165-180 NET the last 2 months. His projections were on the money almost all the way through the season.
What he seemed to nail the most last year
tracking it was the overall ranges the schedule would land the team in.
For instance with last years 342 ranked OOC schedule and 113th overall
schedule 15 wins got ECU to 183rd. 18 would have probably got it to
something like 160, 20 wins to 150 etc. He had it zeroed in on what the wins
would mean for a projection.
It's still early, but that is probably what is most discouraging about this years schedule is how poor it looks particularly the AAC portion. The OOC is as weak as ever but the AAC seems more disappointing right now under the formula that will decide which teams in the AAC go to NCAA's and NIT's. That affects ECU financially as well indirectly. Currently he has added a win to ECU's projection from 10 wins in the preseason to 11 and the NET is projection is even worse than his own ranking at 246th. The rest of the AAC SOS seems to be the culprit.
5 AAC teams projected 150+
15 wins with this schedule as projected now is unlikely to even get ECU back to 183, it might not crack or barely crack 200. If some of those teams start getting some upsets things can change but 11-18 only gets you a #246 NET in this projection under the NET formula right now. That's not including the other two unknown games in the Florida Tourney but they are unlikely to be great quality regardless or change anything much, if it's Kansas City and another bad team it might make it worse. As projected now this team could win 20 games and still probably be a bad 155+ NET team that's how poor the schedule looks today.
