Yeah, I think I just confused things by misunderstanding Wayne's issue, attempted to add clarity to the confusion I added, and ultimately he's where he started. Maybe there is value in my replies to others who read over this thread, but Wayne I'm sorry - I was trying to help but didn't
Attempting to bring things back to the NET Ranking being high for low prestige programs with weak schedules, I think this has to do with WS using their own NET formula; because I can't find the official formula/algorithms anywhere online - it's an NCAA secret.
Now the real formula involves two components; Team Value Index and Adjusted Net Rating. The Adjusted Net Rating modifies the efficiency metric based on opponent and location. The Team Value Index is an algorithm that looks at essentially the same things but has a historical element that favors historically good teams. The Adjusted Net Rating is given more weight than the Team Value Index but the two combine resulting in the NET Ranking.
From what I can tell, and with my curiosity piqued will look into further, the game is using raw Net Rating not an adjusted Net Rating. It's possible an adjusted Net is calculated under the hood however looking at a small sample size of quadrants this doesn't appear to be the case. Another key aspect to overranked small schools would be the Team Value Index. Because that is a complete black box aside from the general description found online, and favors historically good teams, I'd guess this isn't in the games calculation, although some form may be.
If we could force wins on the schedule this would be easy enough to figure out but I will need to do some thinking on a workable methodology in order to truly identify/propose a solution the problem.
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