What's Happened to Home Court Advantage?

[Channel Swimmer]

Apologies if this has brought up before other than Barry's article on Duke and Miami's success thus far on the road, but so far this year it's seeming to go a lot deeper than that. As Barry attests, winning on the road in the ACC is normally a rare and impressive feat, so what are we to make of what has happened thus far in the 2019/20 season?

So far this season home teams are an eye-popping 13-18 in ACC games - that's a winning pct of just .419! Last year the home record in ACC games was 80-55 (.592) with only UNC (7-2 home / 9-0 road) having a better record away than at home. Yes, it's still early but 13 of the 15 teams have already posted ACC road wins, including Pitt who ended a 22-game ACC road losing streak (dating back to a Feb'17 win at BC - their only road win of that season) with Wednesday's victory in Chapel Hill. Dare we believe the perfect 59-0 home record UNC boasts against Clemson is in jeopardy tomorrow? UNC hasn't lost more than 2 home games in any ACC campaign since 2015 (5-4) and hasn't had a losing record at home in ACC play in a decade (3-5 in 2010) but already they're 1-2 at home with home games against Duke, UVA and NC St still to come. Lose that Clemson game and it could be 2010 all over again!

But I digress - this isn't about UNC's woes (as much as I seem drawn to look at that...) The two teams without road wins so far (UNC and Clemson) have each only played 1 game. Besides the road-winless Tar Heels and Tigers, only UVA, FSU and BC have better home records than road records (ok, I admit that stat suffers greatly from small sample size). Home teams lost the 1st 3 games of the ACC regular season (way back on Nov 5!) and though they won 3 of 4 the next day, there hasn't been a single point this season when the overall home winning pct has risen to .500. The differences haven't been huge: November went 3-4, it was 8-9 at year-end, but so far in January rather than re-asserting the advantage, home teams have started just 5-9.

The home teams are expected (by KP) to go 4.3 - 2.7 this weekend and are favoured in 5 of the 7 games. But the 3rd most certain home win is UNC over Clemson (69%) so as GT and Pitt can attest, this year anything can happen!

Road wins so far this year:
11/5 GT 82 NCS 81 (OT)
11/5 LU 87 UM 74
11/5 VT 67 CL 60
11/6 DU 77 VT 63
12/7 NCS 91 WF 82
12/7 BC 73 ND 72
12/7 SU 97 GT 63
12/31 UM 73 CL 68 (OT)
1/4 ND 88 SU 87
1/4 GT 96 UNC 83
1/4 FSU 78 LU 65
1/4 WF 69 PT 65
1/4 DU 95 UM 62
1/7 VT 67 SU 63
1/8 FSU 78 WF 68
1/8 PT 73 UNC 65
1/8 DU 73 GT 64

[SkyBrickey]

Unbalanced early schedules. Small sample size. Duke for example has played 3 out of 4 on the road. The home court advantage should definitely show up in the numbers as the season progresses. But you may be right it’s not as pronounced as seasons past.

Let’s see what .419 moves to after this weekend.

I expect Duke to be a perfect 50/50 in home and away wins this season with our margin of victory higher at Cameron. 🙂

[Acymetric]

Yeah, I would want to look at which home teams are losing/road teams are winning.

Unbalanced schedules plus a lot of weak teams (over half of the league) is probably the cause.

[Bluedog]

Yeah, I would want to look at which home teams are losing/road teams are winning.

Unbalanced schedules plus a lot of weak teams (over half of the league) is probably the cause.

Yeah I think the second point about weak teams is a big factor. There is more separation between the top of the ACC and everyone else so the home court advantage can only do so much. I agree that over the season we'll see it arise again but I expect the top teams to do okay and the schedule has been imbalanced thus far.

[HereBeforeCoachK]

Unbalanced early schedules. Small sample size. Duke for example has played 3 out of 4 on the road. The home court advantage should definitely show up in the numbers as the season progresses. But you may be right it’s not as pronounced as seasons past.

Let’s see what .419 moves to after this weekend.

I expect Duke to be a perfect 50/50 in home and away wins this season with our margin of victory higher at Cameron. 🙂

All good points, but it seems to me attendance is down, energy is down, in these buildings. Another thing is having the ACC games while students are still away on break. I do agree that the .419 will go up...but I had noticed less energy in most crowds before that.

[53n206]

Don't know where advantage has gone, but hope it returns, and stays.

[scottdude8]

Answer: it’s all in the B1G this season, so the law of averages had to kick in. Case and point, Maryland got annihilated on the road last night by Iowa a few day’s after similarly annihilating a ranked Ohio State team at home...