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Posted at 11:00 AM EST.

2:00 PM EST. If the Owls show up here and play their hearts out, they figure to win by 30 or more. Without going into a lot of detail, Tulane is perhaps the worst team among the second tier conferences in the country. The Green Wave are miserable at everything, they're playing for absolutely nothing (they have no pride left) and they can't wait for this nightmare season to end. Now it’s just a matter of motivation for the Owls and we’re going to trust that they’re in no position to take anything for granted.

Whereas UCF (on the AAC) has finished the maintenance portion of its run-in and can now look to seize on the upside still available on its schedule, the Owls have no such luxury. They got all of their most important games in (against Houston and Cincinnati) before the end of January, and came out with a résumé that included a massive win over Houston and not much else. They’ve done well enough since — Tuesday’s loss at Memphis was just their second in seven games — but not well enough to separate themselves from the in-or-out bubble in any meaningful way. They’re right in there, and their three remaining games (Saturday vs. Tulane, at UConn and at home March 9 vs. UCF) only really have the capacity to change that calculus for the worse. In other words, the maintenance continues for the Owls and subjectivity could come into play unless they take care of business beginning here.

Furthermore, the NCAA has developed a new ranking system to replace the RPI as the primary sorting tool for evaluating teams during season. The new ranking system was approved in late July after months of consultation with the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, the National Association of Basketball Coaches, top basketball analytics experts and Google Cloud Professional Services.

The NCAA Evaluation Tool, which will be known as the NET, relies on game results, strength of schedule, game location, scoring margin, net offensive and defensive efficiency, and the quality of wins and losses. The resulting model is the one that will be used as the NET going forward and the selection committee will use it too. Winning big matters.

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