The NCAA Division 1 Men’s Basketball Committee has announced changes to the NET Rankings for the 2020-21 season. The changes are meant to simplify the rankings and will include dropping the number of components from five to two.

The three dropped components will be winning percentage, adjusted winning percentage and scoring margin. The two factors that will remain in use are Team Value Index, which rewards teams for beating quality opponents, especially on the road, and an adjusted net efficiency rating, which takes a teams net efficiency (points per 100 possessions) and adjusts it for strength of opponent and locations (home/away/neutral).

NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said the NCAA was satisfied with the performance of the metric so far but feels these changes will be an improvement. He believes the changes will allow for more precision and a metric that is easier to understand.

There will also be an update to the strength of schedule metric. Every game will be rated on how hard it would be for an NCAA tournament-caliber team to win while considering the strength of opponent and location. From there, each game will be assigned a difficulty score.

With the prominence of the NET Rankings in the building of the NCAA tournament field, these changes are worth noting.

Villanova’s non-conference schedule should be favorable in terms of the NET Rankings, with neutral site games scheduled against Virginia and two of Baylor, Michigan and N.C. State as well as a road game at Texas.