If you’re looking for some of the best betting data in college basketball, you should check out KenPom before heading to the NCAAB betting sites.
Not only do top-rated sportsbooks and bettors use KenPom, but the selection committee also uses KenPom to determine seedings in the NCAA Tournament. KenPom shares offensive and defensive metrics, among many other things, that will help make you a sharp bettor.
Below, we’ll walk you through the entire KenPom website to help you understand how to use the site for your betting success this March Madness season.
Adjusted Efficiency
It’s rare for a team to win the NCAA Tournament without being a top offensive and defensive team.
The first metric you’ll want to look at is the adjusted efficiency for offense and defense. This is a metric to see how many points are scored per 100 possessions. If a team is scoring about 118 points per 100 possessions, that’s a team that has a chance at winning the National Championship. 118 points would put a team inside the top 20 in college basketball.
On the other hand, defensive efficiency is the same metric, just on the other side of the ball. The best defenses in the nation have held teams to below 97 points per 100 possessions.
Therefore, if you can find a team with offensive and defensive efficiencies that meet those requirements, chances are that team is a contender for the NCAA Tournament Championship.
Looking at Matchups
KenPom has a team page for every single D1 basketball school. If you click the team you want to research and investigate, you’ll see dozens of metrics and numbers, along with a current record and previous results.
The game that isn’t highlighted at the bottom is the game that is coming up next for that specific team. If you click on the projected score, you’ll be taken to a matchup screen for the respective game.
With that matchup screen, you can compare and contrast to see how one team projects against the other team. You can compare:
- Effective field goal percentages
- Turnover percentages
- Offensive rebounding percentages
- Ratio between FTA and FGA
Those four categories are considered the four factors. Essentially, if a team wins three of those four categories, they’ll likely win the game.
However, beyond just those categories, you can also look at:
- 3-point field goal percentages
- Two-point field goal percentages
- Free throw percentages
- Block percentages
- Steal percentages
This data is available on the offensive and defensive side of the ball.
KenPom also provides point distribution percentages, bench minutes, experience and average height, and gives insight into how many times players with two fouls in the first half will continue to play on the court for that team.
Player Stats
If team stats aren’t enough for your handicap, you can scroll down and look at player stats. The player stats ultimately give you the same information as the team stats, but they’re simplified to just one player.
If a player nationally ranks in the top 500 in a certain category, you will see a “National Rank” description below the player. Then they’ll highlight the area where the player ranks nationally.
Conference Only Stats
Some people only like to look at how a team or player did in the conference. Those people like to get rid of the non-conference slate that was months ago.
If you click on a conference, it’ll take you to an area where only the stats in conference play matter. In that conference link, you can look at the top five players in the conference and who performed well in conference play only.
They’ll also help you look at how many games were blowouts in the conference and how many games were close. This information might help you figure out if a team from a specific conference is more well off coming to NCAA Tournament time because of the potential close games that they played earlier in the season in conference play.
Games That Already Played
Finally, you can go back in time and look at other games played this season. If you go to the team, you’re looking to research and click the hyperlink from another game, and you can check out the box score of that specific game.
The data has all the box score stats you’re used to seeing. Yet, it also has the team’s probability chart throughout the game and shows the score from every ten minutes in that specific game.
Either way, if you pay attention to KenPom statistics, you’ll already be well ahead of the people in your pool.
