Step 01
Pick your season
82 playable seasons, back to 1944. Real fields, real seeds, real results — and every one of them editable.
Recorded in the game
College basketball tournament simulation
Rewrite the season that still hurts.
A free college basketball simulator. Pick a season. Reshape the roster. Coach another ending.
Free to play, with ads. On iPhone and iPad a one-time Remove Ads purchase turns them off. No download needed to play in a browser.
Point a camera here to open Cut the Nets on the App Store.
Browser gameplay
1985 field · 5 seed
A recording of the game: browsing the archive of playable seasons, swapping two players into a roster before tip-off, the simulation playing out with a live scoreboard and shot chart, and the championship net being cut down strand by strand. Player names are blurred.
- 82
- Playable seasons
- 20,000+
- Real players
- 81
- Missions
How a run works
Three decisions,
then the bracket.
Every run is the same shape. Everything interesting happens inside it.
Step 02
Make your changes
Swap anyone from 20,000+ real players into any spot before tip-off. Want a tighter test instead? Budget Challenge prices every swap by your seed.
Recorded in the game · names blurred
Step 03
Play your ending
Watch every game called live, at 1× to 8×. Change your style or your tempo at a timeout or at halftime. Or sim it and find out.
Recorded in the game · names blurred
One team, three runs
Same roster.
Different ending.
Here is one program, built once and dropped into the 1985 field on the 5 line — then played three separate times. Nothing about the team changed.
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Run one — out in the Round of 16
Past a 12 seed, past a 4 seed, then beaten by the region's 1 seed. A good run that ends early.
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Run two — out in the Round of 16, again
The same two wins, the same 1 seed, the same result. Two attempts, no title.
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Run three — all the way
Same roster, same seed line, same field. This time the 1 seed goes down, and three 2 seeds go down after it. Six wins, and the net comes down.
Every game here is simulated. The engine plays possession by possession from real per-season ratings, so the same team in the same field does not produce the same tournament twice — which is the whole point of playing it again. These three runs were recorded while building this page; they are not a promise about yours.
- Field
- 1985 · 5 seed
- Run three
- 6–0
- Beat
- 12, 4, 1, 2, 2, 2
- Outcome
- National champions
Open the game, then choose 1985 How the simulation actually works →
The archive
An archive
you can change.
Every tournament in the game is transcribed from the public record: the teams, the seeds, the scores, the rounds. Then you get to interfere with it.
From the archive
1985 — the field in the demonstration
A 64-team bracket and a title game decided by two points. This is the field the run on this page was played in, from the 5 line.
A website demonstration of what the archive holds. Pick any of these years for real inside the game.
- Champion
- Villanova
- Title game
- 66–64
- Runner-up
- Georgetown
- Used above
- The 5 seed
- 87 Tournaments in the historical archive, back to 1939
- 82 Of them playable, back to 1944
- 81 Missions built from real results
Browse every title game since 1939 → The biggest upsets in the archive →
Daily, weekly, career
Come back with
a better plan.
The same field, the same fates, for everyone playing that day. Your only edge is the roster you build and the calls you make.
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A new bracket every day
One field a day, identical for everyone who plays it.
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Three goals a day
On iPhone, iPad and the web: three goals drawn each day, a streak you keep by playing, and a season ladder with banners to collect.
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A weekly gauntlet
A harder test each week, with three attempts to get it right.
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Leaderboards
On iPhone and iPad: Game Center leaderboards for the daily bracket, the weekly gauntlet and your streak.
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Send someone your bracket
Share a link to your exact field. They play the same draw and the same fates, and you compare what each of you did with it.
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A career that keeps score
Every finished run is graded S to D and kept in your ledger, with its titles, grades and banners. On iPhone and iPad it syncs over iCloud, with no account.
New in the browser game
A game that knows
who is on the floor.
The game now plays every possession player by player — rotations, fouls, fatigue, substitutions, and a real box score at the end. These features are live in the free browser game and in version 1.1.0 for iPhone and iPad. Rewrite mode offers free roster swaps before tip-off; Budget Challenge keeps seed-based limits.
Style and tempo, together
Choose how you play and how fast before tip-off, then change either one at a timeout or at halftime. The engine reads every call.
Swap anyone, for free
In the main mode there is no budget at all: build the team you have always argued about. Budget Challenge is its own mode when you want the constraint back.
Program Journey
Take one school through its whole tournament history, in order, and see how far you get with each field it actually had.
Matchup Lab
Put any two teams from any two eras on the same floor. Play one exhibition, or run a batch of sims and read the win rate.
At the timeout
The decision you actually get to make.
Four timeouts, a half's worth of evidence, and one sheet that shows you the fouls, the floor and what each plan would do. Pick a style and a tempo, apply them together, and send them back out.
Recorded in the game. Player names are blurred on this site; they appear normally in the product as factual, historical references.
Straight answers
Before you start.
What is Cut the Nets, exactly?
A college basketball tournament simulation. You pick a season from the archive, claim a team in that season's real field, change the roster if you want to, and then coach the bracket out game by game. It is a what-if machine for tournament history — not a tool for predicting this year's games.
Is it free? What do the ads do?
It is free to play in a browser and free to download on iPhone and iPad. Both versions show ads. On iPhone and iPad there is a one-time Remove Ads purchase that turns them off for good; the price is set per region on the App Store.
The browser version is not ad-free, and a purchase made in the app does not carry over to it.
Where can I play it?
Two places: free in any modern browser, with nothing to install, and on iPhone and iPad from the App Store. There is no Android version.
Do the results predict anything real?
No. Every game is simulated from a probabilistic model built on publicly available historical statistics. Nothing that happens on the court is a real result, and none of it represents what any actual person or team would do. It is not a betting tool and it does not forecast live games.
Does it work offline?
On iPhone and iPad, yes — the app carries its own archive and plays without a connection, apart from ads and leaderboards. In a browser you need to be online to load the game.
Are my runs saved?
In the app, every finished run is kept in your career ledger and syncs across your own devices over iCloud, with no account to make. In a browser, your progress is kept in that browser only — it does not sync, and clearing your site data clears it. Browser progress and app progress are separate.
Why are player names blurred in the pictures on this page?
Because these are marketing images. Inside the game, names appear normally: they are used as factual references to recorded historical results, statistics and honours. Blurring them here keeps real people out of promotional material. No photographs, likenesses, logos, mascots or uniforms are used anywhere in the game.
Is this affiliated with any school or league?
No. Cut the Nets is an independent simulation, not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by or licensed by any league, conference, school, athletic association, player or coach.
Something is broken, or I have a question.
Email support@cutthenets.io, or read the support page first — it covers restoring a purchase, syncing, and how to report a bug.
The last thing you do
Cut it down.
Six wins, and the net is yours. Here is one to practise on.
0 / 12
This net is artwork on this website, for you to play with. Cutting it does not win anything in the game.
Free with ads on both. Remove Ads is a one-time purchase on iPhone and iPad.