Points per game is dead. So is rebound margin. These old-school statistics may be pervasive in college basketball discourse, but advanced statistics better explain what we are seeing on the court. The good news is that these aren't actually THAT "advanced." You can understand and use them too!
The place to start is with the "Four Factors," as identified by Dean Oliver. (Here's his full paper explaining his methodology.) Success in these four areas (on offense and defense) is the recipe to winning basketball games: Shooting, turnovers, rebounding, and free throws.
Shooting:
Factor 1 is the team-wide effective field goal percentage.