Another week, and 2 games for everyone have passed except for UNC, so time for another look at the efficiency rankings.

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Below are the current efficiency numbers for each ACC team in conference play thus far. These numbers used to be kept track of publicly by basketball prospectus' John Gasaway, but he's currently putting them behind the site's new pay-wall, so I'll be posting them here all season.

These numbers go beyond win-loss record to, over time, show who truly is the best, and then second best team in the ACC team, and so forth. They're better at doing so than win-loss records, as they truly show which teams are actually beating up on opponents and which are lucky to skate by. Early on of course, they're skewed by outliers (games against Wake Forest), but they're still quite interesting.

The relevant numbers are as follows:
Tempo: Possessions per Game (A measure of how up-pace a team plays.)
Offensive Efficiency: Amount of points scored by a team's offense per possession.
Defensive Efficiency: Amount of points allowed by a team's defense per possession.
Efficiency Margin: The amount a team will outscore it's opponent per 1-possession-each (basically O Efficiency minus D Efficiency)

For ease of reading, I've added a final column, which shows how the Efficiency Margin of each team translates into that team's average margin of victory (or defeat) in an average ACC game (67 Possessions). This is just for display purposes...a team like Duke which plays faster than that will win by more, while a team like UVA which plays slower will win by less.


We now have at least 5 games from all but UNC, so the numbers are starting to mean something and stabilize. Some interesting thoughts based on the numbers:

1. Virginia Tech is for real- Va Tech comes up basically equivalent to Duke in these rankings, thanks to their great win over NC State at State. Both VT and Duke have played Wake, so that's not a factor here; VT is just simply a very good team (and as a result, in Pomeroy, they're basically tied with MD and UNC for #2 team overall) who has lost two close games - one of which (@UNC) is a very acceptable loss. The other loss, to Virginia, was over a month ago, and VT seems to have gotten over the hump.

2. Florida State is also for Real...but still a little inconsistant- FSU's efficiency margin of +.074 is pretty impressive, with the gap between them and the #4 team (Georgia Tech?) being almost as big as the gap between the #4 team and the #7 team (UNC). And unlike Duke and VT, they haven't yet played Wake...if you remove Wake from the numbers, they're right up there with the top two.
That said, they haven't exactly been rolling as they should have. The team dominated BC, with Great offensive Numbers (Not impressive, given BC's awful defense, but still good for FSU) and Great Defensive Numbers (Pretty impressive, given BC's top 5 Offense). But against Miami, FSU's offense returned to its poor scoring ways, making that game far closer than it should have been. Right now FSU is one of three teams (Duke, VT & FSU) with above average offenses and defenses in conference...but that will change if they can't keep their offense up.

3. Okay, what the heck is Georgia Tech doing there? - So yeah, we're still in the sample size where outliers can affect things. GTech exploded over both Wake AND UNC last week, and hasn't lost by blowout numbers to anyone else, allowing it to look decent in the efficiency margins. Of course an efficiency margin of +.32 is NOT VERY GOOD, it's just that the rest of the ACC has stunk it up.

4. It doesn't look good for NC State. - Not a surprise if you've watched them, but well...NC State looks pretty bad in these numbers...and they've already gotten a boost from Wake (they started up top!). With road games at Clemson, Carolina, & Duke, and a home game against VT coming up, they're going to simply have to step it up another level (probably another two levels) to avoid being buried. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know from the standings...but unlike say a team like VaTech who has only one less ACC loss, NC State has not looked good in its wins or losses enough for the efficiency ratings to predict improvements.

5. Wake is still bad. - But at least they improved their efficiency numbers against Duke! (I wish i was kidding). But seriously....they are so bad, words just can't talk about it.