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NET is very important in ranking. The committee has to follow the criteria
https://ncaaorg.s3.amazonaws.com/championships/sports/basketball/d1/women/D1WBB_NETFAQ.pdf
I'd quibble about the indicative "has to follow". NET and the other listed data sources are made available to the SelComm but, realistically, members have the independence to base their decisions on anything they want, including lobbying by coaches and conferences. This is made clear in the next paragraph in the link, which says:
"During selection weekend, the committee members independently evaluate a vast pool of
information. It is these subjective opinions, developed after watching hundreds of games,
investing many hours of personal team (or game) observations, review and comparison of
objective data, plus discussions with coaches and campus/conference representatives, that
dictate how each committee member ultimately votes on the selection of the 37 at-large
teams, followed by the seeding and bracketing of the 68-team championship bracket each
year."
Back to the data sources, note that the official 2026 Principles and Procedures document says the following resources (including rankings and polls) are made available to committee members to use as they wish in their independent subjective decisions:
"Among the resources available to the committee are complete box scores, game summaries and notes, various computer rankings, head-to-head results, chronological results, Division I results, non-conference results, home and away results, results in the last twelve games, rankings, polls, injured and available/unavailable reports and the coaches’ regional advisory committee rankings."
Finally, note that for the 2025-26 tournament a new evaluation metric has been added to complement NET, called Wins Above Bubble (WAB). It is explained HERE.