Advanced college basketball statistics are perhaps at their most useful when they tell you things you can't see with your eyes. For example, a team that averages a low number of points per game might seem offensively inept; in reality, that team might simply play a slow brand of basketball, and are scoring on a high rate of their possessions. That would be a successful team, but it's not something you can really see with your eyes as exactly as the numbers would have it.

This is why the writers at Basketball Prospectus are, one day, going to be as famous as their baseball brethren. To help fans see things their eyes don't tell them -- this is a service with a future.

Of course, it's more fun when tempo-free numbers line up completely with what your eyes tell you. North Carolina's success this year could best be described as "insane." Actually, come to think of it, it's still early December, and I've already run out of ways to describe how good the Tar Heels have been. Basketball Prospectus' Jon Gasaway has the numbers, and they concur:

Nor does this picture change materially if you discard the outliers. Looking at just their wins over major-conference foes (Kentucky, Oregon, Notre Dame, Michigan State), Carolina is still outscoring opponents by more than 0.30 points per trip. The technical term for that level of performance over four games, only one of which was a home game, is "insane."

Gasaway is using this stuff to discuss whether North Carolina can run the table. Even if they don't, their run to the Final Four is at this point almost guaranteed; once they obtain a No. 1 seed, and they will, that trip will be set in stone. (Only in the NCAA Tournament could some force of nature come along and derail UNC, but barring an Act of Demonic Lord Coach K, let's be real: the Tar Heels are going to be in Detroit.) But the larger point is this: North Carolina is having the sort of college basketball success that comes along once in a generation, and it's happening on a game-by-game basis. Even in boring blowouts, we should be taking the appropriate notice.

Related: ACC Basketball, College Basketball Media