NET Rankings update: Gonzaga only drops one spot after loss to Saint Mary's

Bulldogs are No. 27 in country in rankings used to evaluate NCAA Tournament teams

Fortunately for the Gonzaga Bulldogs, the NET Rankings aren't very harsh when it comes to suffering losses against quality opponents.

After a 64-62 loss at home to Saint Mary's on Saturday, Gonzaga (16-6, 7-2 WCC) dropped down one spot from No. 26 to No. 27 in the latest NET Rankings, the primary evaluation tool used by the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. The letdown against its West Coast Conference rival did drop Gonzaga to 0-5 in Quad 1 games.

Still, the advanced analytics view the Bulldogs higher than most teams with a similar resume. All of the other programs in the NET's top 40 have at least one Quad 1 win on the season. In fact, there are only two other programs in the Top 50 without a high-quality win — No. 41 Wake Forest (0-3 in Q1) and No. 48 SMU (0-2), both of which are not slated to earn at-large bids into the NCAA Tournament according to most bracketology updates.

Gonzaga's ranking is held up in large part by its 15-1 record across the other three quadrants. Outside of Saint Mary's, which remained at No. 21 in the NET, Gonzaga at No. 27 and San Francisco at No. 65, the rest of the WCC is outside the top 110 teams, with five league members outside the top 170.

League play aside, some of Gonzaga's nonconference wins don't look as great on the resume as they once did. UCLA, which was 28th in KenPom heading into its game against Gonzaga at the Maui Invitational in November, is 124th in the NET currently. The 69-65 win in Hawaii now appears as a Quad 3 game for the Bulldogs.

USC was 78th in the first NET Rankings of the season, which was released the day after Gonzaga beat the Trojans, 89-76, in Las Vegas. Since that game on Dec. 2, USC has lost 10 of its last 14 games and sits in last place in the Pac-12 standings. What was once a preseason top 25 team has fallen completely out of NCAA Tournament talks and into Quad 2 range.

The Bulldogs have three more Q1 opportunities on the season, with the first coming on Saturday at No. 17 Kentucky, which is one spot ahead in the NET at No. 26. The last two regular season games at San Francisco (Feb. 29) and Saint Mary's (March 2) are also currently slated to be Q1 games.

In the meantime, Gonzaga will look to take care of business starting with a home game against Portland (9-15, 3-6 WCC) on Wednesday. The Pilots sit in seventh place in the WCC standings after picking up a pair of wins over eighth-place Pepperdine and ninth-place Pacific last week. At 300th in the NET, the Pilots are 0-10 in the first three quadrants and 7-5 in Quad 4.

The Bulldogs look for their 17th consecutive win over the Pilots on Wednesday at 5 p.m. PST, at the McCarthey Athletic Center.

Gonzaga coach Mark Few on loss to Saint Mary's: 'Guys gotta step up and make shots'