How to Turn (Free) KenPom Efficiency Ratings Into Point Spreads

Helpful for Fans or Analysts in Tournaments

I’ve heard countless media people referencing Ken Pomeroy’s amazing website when discussing college basketball games this season. Most focus on team rankings. Those are free on the home page, and are typically (much) more accurate than the AP poll. Others have clearly paid for (very affordable) subscriptions that allow deeper dives into the most important skill sets of teams and players.

I was going to write something like “Pomeroy deserves to be on the Mt. Rushmore of stat analysts.” But, the site he created many years ago is so unique, so helpful, so incredibly easy to use to find the most important information…it’s just better to build a “Mt. Pomeroy” and see if anyone else in the future deserves to be on it. His accomplishment truly is in a class by itself. He is Mt. Pomeroy.

What I’m going to talk about today is something anybody can do off the free home page. I think you’ll find it handy once postseason tournaments begin and almost every game is on a neutral court. You don’t have to worry about adding in various home court advantage values at different sites. Just estimate the point difference between any two teams in an upcoming or potential future matchup. (What’s the expected point difference if UCONN played Duke, and so on).

*Go kenpom.com so that you’re looking at the home page.

Again, this page is FREE. There’s no excuse for you NOT to be looking at it regularly if you’re an avid college basketball fan or serious bettor.

*Look at the column labeled AdjEM.

Don’t worry about jargon, abbreviations, or what anything means. It’s okay if you WANT to know that stuff. But, don’t let the alphabet soup choke your enthusiasm. Too many casual fans (and famous sportscasters/sportswriters) start tuning out statheads as soon as they start speaking in jargon. I blame both smug statheads for trying to show off their jargon in a tone-deaf way, and smug media members for not trying hard enough to learn what’s really important as they make cracks about who’s probably still living in their mother’s basement.

It's the third column from the left. Right after conference and won-lost record. Easy to find. You can’t miss it.

The label stands for Adjusted Efficiency Margin. For your purposes, consider it a Power Rating that tells you how good or bad every team is on a point scale. Efficiency as used in basketball stat analysis represents what happens over 100 possessions. Smart people knew years ago that scoring averages had to be adjusted for tempo. They standardized this metric at 100 possessions to create a level playing field.

(Quick digression…many, many years ago Princeton used to hold onto the ball forever on offense, while running tricky back door sets in hopes of creating easy baskets. Because this ate clock and caused LOW-SCORING games, the media kept raving about Princeton’s DEFENSE! “Princeton is only allowing 48 points per game this season!” Or whatever. You could see with your own eyes that the Tigers didn’t play particularly great defense. Nothing special in the skill sets. Not blocking shots, forcing inordinate TOs, or doing much that would defensively intimidate an opponent. But, virtually ALL of basketball media hero-worshipped the defense while the offensive sets/principals eventually had a big impact on how the game would be played at the college and pro levels (ultimately within the confines of a shot clock, however). If people had adjusted for Princeton’s exceedingly slow pace, they would have realized the offense was very efficient, the defense nothing special.)

Okay, back to work. The AdjEM column is a virtual Power Rating scale based on 100 possessions.

*Adjust differences down to the length of a college basketball game.

Of course, college games don’t last 100 possessions. This isn’t the NBA. A typical college game this season has about 68 possessions. That will cause teams on kenpom’s chart to be further apart than they really are in a head-to-head scenario. A team that’s 10 points better on the scale would be 6.8 points better in a 40-minute neutral-court game (say, Arizona vs. Texas). A team that’s 20 points better would be about 13.6 points better (maybe Tennessee vs. Akron in a first round Dance meeting).

If you want to project a neutral court meeting between any two teams, take the distance between them and multiply by 0.68. You can do this on a calculator, on your phone, or just round off to 6.5 or 7 points every 10 and estimate it off the top of your head. If you see two teams are 10 points apart at kenpom, take a shortcut to 6.5 on a neutral court.

Easy math that can be done quickly. Simply take the difference between any two teams that you see on the scale, and multiply that by .68.

Remember, in mismatches, that you’re looking at the DISTANCE between two teams. There will likely be a few negative teams in the Dance because they won a small-college tournament. Maybe a national power at +28 is facing a longshot that’s -4. That’s a distance of 32 points. You’d multiply 32 points by .68 and get 22 points for a neutral court margin expectation.

I want to emphasize that this is about visualizing expectations in potential matchups. This is not a strategy for “beating the market.” Point spreads are better. But, you don’t know NOW what the market spread will be in matchups that haven’t even been determined. If you’re mapping out tournament scenarios for conferences or the Big Dance…this will help you paint fairly accurate pictures.

And, if you do want to use this as a handicapping tool, there’s nothing wrong with having it as part of your arsenal. It’s a voice you can listen to. Hopefully you’re listening to a lot of informed voices.

That’s it for today. Thanks for reading. Back to our regular schedule soon. Friday (at the latest), we’ll review weekday box score stats from the Big 12 for paid subscribers, and get caught up with the various stat categories we’ve been monitoring (either two separate articles or one long article). Saturday, expanded coverage of how sharps are betting the final Saturday of Big 12 regular season action. Next week, we’ll work more conferences into our sharps coverage with the start of major tournaments. Then, things will get REALLY busy during the Big Dance.

Can’t wait!