NCAA Basketball: UNC, Kansas State among top “away from home” teams
The typical NCAA Basketball team has its share of struggles on the road. But relative to its overall season performance, some teams have actually “thrived” away from home whereas others have especially “struggled.” Could this be predictive of neutral court performance come March?
“Away-from-home rating,” (AFH) courtesy of Haslametrics.com, is defined as the, “measure of team’s away/neutral game performances vs. its overall season performance.” It doesn’t measure which teams have won the most or least “away from home” games. It doesn’t even tell you exactly which teams have been the best from an efficiency perspective away from home. What it does provide, however, is which teams have performed the best or worst away from home relative to how they’ve performed the rest of the season.
(All statistics used in this article were found via Haslametrics and Bracketodds and are up to date through the games completed on Mar 1.).
Imagine only looking at a team’s performance in its home games. Based on these results, there would be a level of performance expectations for these teams in their “away from home” games. “Away from-home rating” (AFH) shows which teams have most over and underperformed relative to these expectations. At Haslametrics, teams that have performed above its expectations have “positive” ratings, while the underperforming have “negative” ratings.
I was curious to see whether teams with especially positive or negative rankings seemed to over or underperform in the NCAA Tournament. My logic was this: all tournament games are played on a neutral court, so teams that have performed above expectations away from home might be better suited in March, and vice versa for the “below expectations” teams.
I decided to focus on the teams on the margins, the teams that have performed especially above or below expectations. Each season, going back to 2014-15, there have been ~15-30 teams with ratings >=5.00 (above expectations) and ~15-30 <=-5.00 (below expectations). An even smaller number of these teams have actually ended up in the NCAA Tournament. Although +/- 5.00 is fairly arbitrary, I decided to start here. First, here’s a look at how the “>=5.00,” or the over-performing away from home teams, have performed in March.
(Note: Haslametrics includes both “time-dependent” and “time-independent ratings.” “Time dependent” applies a greater weighting to recent games. I decided to use “time independent” to diminish any bias from for example, a team significantly boosting its rating by winning a few late season road games.)
Although a small sample size, it was interesting to see that every team except 13-seeded Stony Brook won at least one tournament game. On the whole, these teams averaged 0.86 wins vs the expected 0.69 wins based on their seeding (per Bracketodds). This season, there are seven potential tournament teams that have qualifying “Away from Home” ratings.
I was initially surprised to see Louisville so highly rated, especially considering two of their last three games have been road losses to Syracuse and Boston College in which they seemingly performed below expectations. But taking a step back, 4/5 of the Cardinals’ best efficiency performances this season have come on the road against Georgia Tech, Wake Forest, North Carolina, and Virginia Tech. For teams, like North Carolina, Duke, and Houston that have played pretty well everywhere, their strong AFH ratings might be just another reason to have confidence in these teams come March. Next, I dove into the teams with the “<=-5.00” AFH ratings, the teams that have underperformed away from home.
(Note: These ratings don’t take into account injuries. For example, the rating didn’t “love” Louisville’s road win over Virginia Tech any less even though the Hokies were without Justin Robinson. This can alter things a bit.)
There was a range in performance for these teams, ranging from a 1st-round loss for 4-seed California in 2015-16 to a Final 4 run for 3-seed Oregon the same season. Overall though, these teams did indeed perform slightly below their seed expectations, averaging 1.05 wins vs. their expected 1.13. The SMU first round loss in 2016-17 jumped out to me personally, as I was so high on this team and shocked when they were upset by USC. Although, it would have only been a piece of the puzzle, perhaps SMU’s poor AFH rating could have hinted towards an underperformance in March. This season, there are three potential tournament teams with <-5.00 “Away from Home” ratings.
For anyone that’s been following Auburn this season, their poor rating likely doesn’t come as much of a surprise. This could be especially problematic come March, when the Tigers will be forced to win away from home. Gonzaga’s inclusion might be a bit surprising, but it’s not as if Haslametrics is down on Gonzaga (currently has them ranked #1). It’s possible that the Bulldogs have just been playing so well at home that it is creating unreasonable expectations on the road.
For example, maybe Gonzaga beats Team A at home by 40, is then expected to beat Team B on the road by 20, and only wins by 15 (thus underperforming). But as much as their negative rating might not be overly concerning, Gonzaga will have to win six straight “away from home” games to win a title. If they continue to underperform away from home, it might eventually cost them.
When the tournament finally arrives, every game will be “away from home.” Regardless of how good a team has been, their ability to perform in this environment will be all that matters.