ACC Summer Session<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nI’ve had this theory that I don’t think I have expressed here yet: home court advantage isn’t much different between, say playing at Duke, as compared to playing at Savannah State. Most of the home court advantage is the result of simply being able to maintain one’s normal routine, play in familiar confines, etc. Sure, it’s harder to win at Cameron Indoor, but that has much more to do with the team you have to play there than any intimidation by the fans. So even though Katz’s comment falls into the common-sense category, it was with skepticism that I read it.<\/p>\n
And any skepticism I have can be easily addressed by tallying up how each conference’s home teams did in conference play. Here’s the list for the 2005 season…<\/p>\n
1 Big Sky 42-14 .750\n 2 MAC 83-34 .709\n 3 Ivy 38-18 .679\n 4 Missouri Valley 61-29 .678\n 5 SEC 65-31 .677\n 6 Ohio Valley 59-29 .670\n 7 Patriot 37-19 .661\n 8 Big Ten 58-30 .659\n 9 WAC 59-31 .656\n 9 Big West 59-31 .656\n 9 MAAC 59-31 .656\n12 SoCon 62-34 .646\n13 America East 58-32 .644\n14 Big XII 61-35 .635\n15 Mountain West 35-21 .625\n15 ACC 55-33 .625\n15 Big South 45-27 .625\n15 Sun Belt 50-30 .625\n15 West Coast 35-21 .625\n20 Pac 10 56-34 .622\n21 Conference USA 69-43 .616\n22 NEC 60-39 .606\n23 CAA 54-36 .600\n24 Horizon 43-29 .597\n25 SWAC 53-37 .589\n26 Big East 56-40 .583\n26 Atlantic 10 56-40 .583\n26 MidCon 42-30 .583\n29 Southland 50-38 .568\n30 Atlantic Sun 62-48 .564\n31 MEAC 54-45 .545<\/pre>\nSo yeah, the ACC (15th) was tougher on road teams than the Big East (26th), but what is striking is how random this list seems to be. If a coach takes a job in the Big Sky, he’s not going to be complaining about how difficult it will be to play in Pocatello, Missoula, and Cheney. Which means if you buy into this data, then it’s hard to support the traditional view of home-court advantage. And if you don’t believe the data, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this blog. If the "rabid crowd theory" has any validity then there must be a lot of noise contained in the 2005 numbers.<\/p>\n
To weed out the noise, let’s look at the aggregate conference home records for the last five years combined. <\/p>\n
1 Mountain West 192- 88 .686\n 2 SEC 320-160 .667\n 2 Big XII 320-160 .667\n 4 Big Ten 293-147 .666\n 5 Missouri Valley 296-154 .658\n 6 MAC 384-201 .656\n 7 ACC 245-131 .652\n 8 CAA 271-145 .651\n 9 WAC 281-151 .650\n10 Big South 220-120 .647\n11 Big Sky 191-105 .645\n12 Ohio Valley 251-141 .640\n13 Horizon 219-125 .637\n14 Patriot 169- 99 .631\n15 Conference USA 343-201 .631\n16 SWAC 280-170 .622\n17 Southland 311-195 .615\n18 SoCon 295-185 .615\n19 Big West 265-167 .613\n20 Big East 333-211 .612\n21 NEC 332-214 .608\n22 Atlantic 10 285-185 .606\n23 Pac 10 271-179 .602\n24 Sun Belt 250-166 .601\n25 America East 248-166 .599\n26 Atlantic Sun 308-208 .597\n27 MidCon 195-133 .595\n28 MAAC 267-183 .593\n29 Ivy 163-117 .582\n30 MEAC 288-207 .582\n31 West Coast 155-125 .554<\/pre>\nThis list should make a little more sense to the folks that think the intensity of the crowd is what matters. Four of the six power conferences hold spots in the top seven for home court advantage. But there are still some oddities like the Big East and Pac 10 being ranked so low, and the respectable WCC being the worst conference for home teams. <\/p>\n
So what does this mean? You can take from it what you want. But when I see the Big South with a better home record than the Big East, I have to wonder how much of an impact an intense crowd has. Sure, it has some impact, since there is a general trend for the conferences with the more avid following to be near the top. But the fact that it took five years of data to uncover a weak trend, and that there isn’t much consistency for a given conference from year-to-year*, tells me that factors that affect basketball as a whole (travel, change in routine, etc.) have more impact than factors specific to any conference (size\/intensity of crowds, or "dominant courts").<\/p>\n
*Some support for that idea – the average year-to-year correlation of conference rank in home court win% over the past 5 years is .24. Compare that to the average correlation of RPI rank over the same time of .92. Or looking at it more simply – the average change in RPI rank from year-to-year for a particular conference is 2.7, and for home court rank it’s 8.6.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There’s nothing like an unsubstantiated assertion to motivate me to post. The principal difference between the ACC and the Big East is the level of home-court advantage. Sure, there are a few dominant courts in the Big East, but you’d be hard-pressed to find a weak one anywhere in the ACC. Even traditional bottom-feeders, such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=785"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/785\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=785"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=785"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=785"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}