We are 2,879 games into the 2019-20 season and we finally have a team that has cracked the +30.00 efficiency margin threshold at KenPom. Efficiency margin is a concept well-known to basketball and stat junkies, but if you’re foggy on what the metric is and how it aligns every team in Ken Pomeroy’s system, he laid it out a few years ago. 

“AdjEM is the difference between a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency,” Pomeroy wrote in 2016. “It’s simple subtraction. Even your dog can do it. It represents the number of points the team would be expected to outscore the average D-I team over 100 possessions and it has the advantage of being a linear measure. The difference between +31 and +28 is the same as the difference between +4 and +1. It’s three points per 100 possessions which is much easier to interpret. This measure also makes the SOS and average conference strength numbers less mysterious.”

This season’s been notorious for its lack of power. But a team getting to +30.00 was inevitable.

That team is Duke. And it’s in part why there is a change atop the power rankings. Let’s get to ’em.