As the 2015-16 College Basketball season passes its halfway point, it’s worth taking a look at the value of a home game. Various people have done it in the past, but none of it has been updated for 2015-16, and we’ll look at how best to do it.
First off, we’ll take every game played this season and take the average home score versus the average visitor score, you’ll see that home court advantage is worth approximately 9.5 points, with the home team scoring an average of 76.95 and the visitor scoring an average of 67.45 points this year. So that’s it, the laziest answer I can give.
But wait, you haven’t considered that a whole bunch of teams play Division 2 / 3 / NAIA opponents. I figured you wouldn’t be happy with that. Removing these teams knocks us down to 2869 games (Through January 17th) out of a total of 3297. Overall, the change brings the house edge down to 6.75 points, 75.14-68.39.
Of course, that would be the second laziest answer I could give you. Truth is, November and December are full of neutral site games, and that shouldn’t help us. So as we set out to remove them, I test my query-making skills 1 (or at least realize the value of having a “neutral site?” flag), and see as no surprise, increases “home court advantage” to an average of 7.38 points, 75.7-68.32.
That’s fine, but you’re not factoring in that home court at Cameron Indoor Stadium is a lot bigger than home court at Grambling. Fair enough, but due to data size and various anomalies that are made worse due to sample size (since I’m using 2016 data), let’s simplify it to conferences. I will take the average number of points scored at home by each team and group them by conference, and do the same for points they score on the road. But, because I know you’re just going to point out that this would be inherently beneficial to the power 5 conferences, I’ve also narrowed down the results to just conference games (which, in general, has a decent sample size, though not robust by any means). This will give us an idea of how valuable home court advantage is for different conferences, with a (somewhat flawed) assumption that all ACC stadia are equal from a crowd standpoint (as an example).
Here’s what it looks like:
| Conference | Overall Average Home Score | Overall Average Away Score | Biased Home Court Advantage | In-Conference Average Home Score | In-Conference Average Away Score | Home Court Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ACC | 77.81 | 68.59 | 9.21 | 69.03 | 66.97 | 2.05 |
| America East | 72.37 | 70.12 | 2.24 | 73.50 | 75.95 | -2.45 |
| Atlantic 10 | 76.76 | 68.43 | 8.32 | 74.47 | 69.19 | 5.28 |
| Atlantic Sun | 77.84 | 71.92 | 5.93 | 83.54 | 75.31 | 8.23 |
| Big 12 | 80.34 | 70.53 | 9.82 | 74.86 | 69.82 | 5.04 |
| Big East | 75.94 | 66.89 | 9.04 | 66.91 | 64.94 | 1.97 |
| Big Sky | 74.69 | 68.21 | 6.48 | 77.44 | 73.47 | 3.97 |
| Big South | 72.46 | 67.78 | 4.68 | 71.35 | 67.20 | 4.15 |
| Big Ten | 76.64 | 67.15 | 9.49 | 68.48 | 66.83 | 1.64 |
| Big West | 72 | 70.93 | 1.07 | 72.31 | 71.75 | 0.56 |
| Colonial Athletic | 72.78 | 71.31 | 1.47 | 72.37 | 71.50 | 0.87 |
| Conference USA | 75.76 | 68.61 | 7.14 | 77.80 | 72.54 | 5.26 |
| Horizon League | 73.51 | 69.91 | 3.6 | 74.35 | 70.87 | 3.48 |
| Ivy League | 76.85 | 68.33 | 8.52 | 74.75 | 70.25 | 4.50 |
| MAAC | 73 | 71.79 | 1.21 | 72.32 | 70.93 | 1.39 |
| MAC | 70.64 | 65.09 | 5.55 | 60.37 | 58.30 | 2.07 |
| MEAC | 70.43 | 63 | 7.43 | 69.41 | 67.91 | 1.50 |
| Missouri Valley | 68.56 | 65.53 | 3.03 | 63.10 | 61.35 | 1.74 |
| Mountain West | 72.86 | 67.14 | 5.71 | 67.97 | 64.48 | 3.48 |
| Northeast | 71.63 | 64.44 | 7.19 | 70.07 | 68.76 | 1.31 |
| Ohio Valley | 76.49 | 67.18 | 9.31 | 75.41 | 69.34 | 6.06 |
| Pac 12 | 81.66 | 73.6 | 8.06 | 78.17 | 74.03 | 4.13 |
| Patriot League | 71.67 | 67.75 | 3.92 | 70.63 | 67.60 | 3.03 |
| SEC | 78.15 | 64.73 | 13.42 | 66.71 | 63.18 | 3.53 |
| Southern | 75 | 67.65 | 7.35 | 76.91 | 68.50 | 8.41 |
| Southland | 69.56 | 66.15 | 3.41 | 69.85 | 66.74 | 3.12 |
| Summit League | 75.65 | 72.13 | 3.53 | 74.88 | 72.71 | 2.17 |
| Sun Belt | 73.65 | 67.78 | 5.88 | 72.50 | 69.50 | 3.00 |
| SWAC | 70.33 | 62.62 | 7.72 | 69.88 | 67.38 | 2.50 |
| The American | 73.73 | 63.98 | 9.75 | 58.07 | 57.93 | 0.13 |
| West Coast | 76.81 | 70.18 | 6.63 | 78.03 | 72.97 | 5.06 |
| Western Athletic | 71.71 | 64.27 | 7.44 | 73.67 | 71.58 | 2.08 |
Interesting takeaways so far:
- The obvious one is that it’s better to be on the road in the American East than to be at home. This is likely due to schedule imbalances and will fix itself as the season goes on (we will follow up in March!)
- Overall the average for all in-conference games is 3.1 points, which seems pretty reasonable. For power conferences, the number is 3.06 points.
- The power conferences don’t generate the home court advantage that one would expect. In fact, the top conference is the Big 12, which is 7th overall. This is likely due to either some schedule imbalances (less likely) or the fact that most of the recruits playing on “Power Conference” teams get used to playing in “intense” arenas (I suspect this is the main reason).
- If you hate Big Ten “First one to 60 wins” type basketball, you can skip watching The American Athletic Conference games. Conversely, if you like close games maybe you should, because the score is on average 58.07-57.93.
- The Pac 12 loves their scoring, but in-conference the Atlantic Sun loves it even more. The conference that brought Dunk City to the NCAA is apparently all about offense, which seems like good marketing until you realize that you’re watching Kennesaw State (The Owls!) take on North Florida (The Ospreys!) on a Saturday afternoon.2
So there you have it, a rough idea of how much home court advantage is worth so far this season. We will take another look at the numbers in March and see what the full season looks like. If I were to guess, I would think the numbers would be a lot closer to zero as players adjust to playing in noisy venues. Or in the case of the America East, perhaps home teams will start winning some games.
- a snippet from the query:
or (home_team = “Saint Joe’s” and venue = “Hagan Arena”)
or (home_team = “Saint Louis” and venue = “Chaifetz Arena”)
or (home_team = “Saint Mary’s” and venue = “McKeon Pavilion”)
or (home_team = “Samford” and venue = “Pete Hanna Center”)
or (home_team = “San Diego” and venue = “Jenny Craig Pavilion”)
or (home_team = “San Diego State” and venue = “Viejas Arena”) - Kennesaw State won 93-78, for the record.