College Basketball Road Court Performance
Earlier this week, I released an article called “The best home-court advantage teams in college basketball” on VSiN to a very nice response. It apparently resonated with readers as I was asked repeatedly to get the follow-up piece on road performance out before Saturday’s huge 154-game betting slate arrived. I can easily see the reason, as one side of the coin is not as useful without the other.
With that in mind, here is the follow-up piece. The goal of this is to find and share which teams have been performing best and worst on the road across the country recently, both in terms of wins and losses, and what I term to be True Road Court Performance Ratings. I then take these findings and use them to set specific road court points for every team, which I use in the Power, Effective Strength, and Bettors Ratings you see on VSiN.com every day.
Like the earlier home court edition, I believe this piece and the accompanying chart will serve bettors in a variety of ways. First and foremost, revealing which teams are the best and worst on the road across the country, not only by their formulated True Road Court Performance points but also by their outright and point spread records and their scoring totals. You will also be able to quickly spot which teams are better or worse on the road when it comes to conference play versus non-conference play. Use these findings to aid your wagering for the rest of the season.
As a reminder of why I address this subject every year around this time, I remember many years ago always hearing that “3 points” should be the typical home court allowance. I also know that there are handicappers that do it from a general sense, issuing a standard 2-3 points depending upon how much they value that particular factor.
Others, such as myself, develop team-specific home and road court points, assuming that there are natural environments that are tougher than others across the hoops landscape and teams that, for one reason or another, perform better or worse when on the road. For that latter group, I am here to help in your quest to determine which teams deserve the most road-court performance points.
To determine which teams hold the best/worst True Road Court Performance in college basketball, I have taken the teams’ game logs in true road games since the start of the 2021-22 season, or essentially the last 2-1/2 seasons. I compared their average power rating in those games to their opponents’ average power rating, using my actual logged numbers for every game. This margin would be considered the amount they should have won or lost by when meeting on a neutral court or the expected margin.
Then, I compared this amount to the actual point differential the team accumulated in those games. In essence, it compares the actual result against the expected results. This is the True Road Court Performance. Obviously, the teams that had a greater actual differential than expected differential played the “best” at home. For college teams, the margins went as high as +1.1 for Pittsburgh to -8.7 for Tulsa.
Of course, no one would ever assign an actual advantage for Pittsburgh to be playing on the road. However, the Panthers are worthy of your betting consideration when oddsmakers don’t give them the respect they perhaps deserve when playing away. Just this year alone, they are 4-1 SU and ATS in true road games. The next road game for Bradley is Saturday, 1/27, at Miami.
Alternatively, there is no way that those setting the lines could penalize Tulsa almost 9 points when they play away from home, but to not price them lower than most or all of the rest of the country in that scenario wouldn’t be realistic. The Golden Hurricane are, in fact, on a brutal 4-22 ATS skid on the road.
Another reminder from the earlier article, I believe most bookmakers will assign an average of about 3.0 points in a college basketball game to a home team. In this study, I have personally found that the true college basketball number is closer to 3.5 for nonconference games over the last 2-1/2 seasons, but drops to about 2.8 in conference play. This averages out to right around 3.1 points.
One important thing to note is that I don’t specifically assign my exact road court ratings in direct accordance with the True Road Court Performance Rating, as I also strongly consider the straight-up and ATS records. The overall home court edge I give in all my simulations can vary between 2.0 and 4.0 points, and I do make adjustments to lower that number by about 0.6 points for every conference game.
Let’s take a quick look at some of the other highlights I have found from my college road court performance study, then go back and utilize the home court advantage study from earlier to find the biggest home/road mismatches each day.
College Basketball Road Court Performance Study Highlights
- Collectively, the conference that has performed best on the road over the last 2-1/2 seasons has been the Ivy League, at -2.01. That is a little ahead of Patriot at -2.12, Not coincidentally, these two leagues are perhaps the best known “academic conferences”, and discipline/focus are big part of what goes in to winning on the road. The MAAC (-2.15), Southern (-2.27), Big East (-2.38), and Big West (-2.38) have also been strong road performers.
- The conferences with the worst True Road Court Performance in college basketball over the last 2-1/2 seasons have been the Pac 12 (-4.13), Big 12 (-4.08), Conference USA (-4.07), and Summit (-4.04). All four of those leagues are around a full point worse than the average college basketball conference when it comes to road performance.
- Five teams have won better than 74% of the time on the road over the last 2-1/2 seasons. They are Houston (19-5), North Texas (21-6), VCU (19-6), St Mary’s-CA (17-6), and Gonzaga (14-5).
- The worst outright record for any college basketball team on the road since the start of the 2021-22 season belongs to Pepperdine, at 1-29. Tulsa (1-27) and Oregon State (1-26) have also won just once on the road in board game action during that span. Nebraska-Omaha at 2-38 has been nearly as bad.
- Five teams have compiled ATS records better than 70% in college basketball on the road since the start of the 2021-22 season. They are Miami (19-6 ATS), Vanderbilt (19-7 ATS), LeMoyne (8-3 ATS), Providence (18-7 ATS), and Eastern Washington (34-14 ATS). Santa Clara owns the best in-conference ATS mark in that time span, 15-3 ATS, followed by Miami (17-4 ATS), and Grambling (15-4 ATS).
- Five college basketball teams have been going under 30% ATS over the last 2-1/2 seasons on the true road. They are Tulsa (4-22 ATS), Virginia Tech (8-22 ATS), Indiana (7-19 ATS), Utah (7-18 ATS) and Ohio State (7-18 ATS).
- Only Tulsa (3-17 ATS), Virginia Tech (6-18 ATS), and Florida Gulf Coast (5-15 ATS) are at or under 25% against the Vegas number in league play since the start of the 2021-22 season.
- The four teams that have played to the average biggest point spreads on the road in recent seasons are no surprise. That list is topped by Gonzaga (-11.7), followed by Houston (-8.8), Arizona (-7.7), and Purdue (-5.7).
- Three teams have been worse than 16-point average underdogs on the road in recent seasons of college basketball, and they are Mississippi Valley State (+23.4), Houston Christian (+16.9), and Arkansas-Pine Bluff (+16.5).
- There have been three college basketball teams that have averaged at least 80 PPG in their road games over the last 2-1/2 seasons. They are:
Gonzaga – 85.9 PPG
Arizona – 80.5
Toledo – 80.3
- Three teams in college basketball have allowed 63 PPG or fewer in road games since the start of the 2021-22 season. That list includes:
North Texas – 58.8
St Mary’s-CA – 62.2
Dayton – 62.4
- The only two teams that have outscored opponents by more than 9 PPG on the road since 2021 are Gonzaga (+12.6) & Houston (+9.3).
- Using my formula comparing how much teams have won by at home as compared to how much they were supposed to win by based upon average power ratings, the top teams for True Road Court Performance in college basketball over the last 2-1/2 seasons have been:
- Pittsburgh +1.1
- Akron +1.0
- Princeton +0.9
- Miami +0.9
- Texas A&M +0.7
- The teams with the worst True Home Court Advantage ratings in all of college basketball based upon their home performances over the last 2-1/2 seasons have been:
- Tulsa -8.7
- Evansville -8
- Utah -7.5
- Pepperdine -7.3
- Northeastern -6.9
You will find the entire list of all 362 NCAA D-1 teams and their road court performance on the chart below, with a breakdown by overall and conference games. They are sorted in order of True Road Court Performance overall rating.
