Determining College Basketball’s True Home Court Advantage:

Every year, we get the loudest of college basketball “experts” proclaiming how hard it is to win games on the road in certain conferences. This year, the SEC is the media darling. Whenever I hear bold comments like this without any reference point, I try to find the numbers behind the theory to validate it. To do so, I conduct a study to find and share which teams have been performing best and worst across the country, both in terms of wins and losses, and what I term to be True Home Court Advantage Ratings. I then take these findings and use them to set specific home court advantage points for every team, which I use in the Power, Effective Strength, and Bettors Ratings you see on VSiN.com every day.

This piece and the accompanying chart can serve bettors in a variety of ways. First and foremost, revealing which teams are the best and worst at home across in the country, not only by their formulated True HCA points, but also by their outright and point spread records, as well as their scoring totals. You will also be able to quickly spot which teams are better or worse at home when it comes to conference play versus non-conference play. Use these findings, as well as those in the follow-up True Road Performance study, to aid your wagering for the rest of the season.

 

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I’ve always believed that one of the most important and debated factors in handicapping sports is in determining how much weight to be given to home court/field advantage. The numbers can vary greatly based on who you ask. I remember many years ago always hearing that “3 points” should be the typical home court allowance. I also know that there are handicappers who do it from a general sense, issuing a standard 2-3 points, depending on how much they value that particular factor. There are others, such as myself, that develop team-specific home court edges, assuming that there are naturally environments that are tougher than others across the hoops landscape. For that latter group, I am here to help in your quest to determine which teams deserve the most home court advantage points.

To determine which teams hold the best True Home Court Advantage in college basketball, I have taken the teams’ game logs at home since the start of the 2022-23 season, or essentially the last 2-1/2 seasons, with games through Tuesday, 1/27/25. I compared their average power rating in those games to their opponents’ average power rating, using my actual logged numbers during that span 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. I then compared this amount to the actual point differential that the team accumulated in those games. In essence, it compares the actual result against the expected results. This is the True Home Court Advantage. 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 +9.2 for Alabama to -2.2 for Loyola-MD.

Now, just so we’re clear, I don’t personally assign the Tide 9.2 points of home-court advantage, but I will give them more than the average across all teams, which I’ve determined to be 3.3 points over the last 2-1/2 seasons. Of course, Alabama is seemingly always worthy of your betting consideration when oddsmakers don’t give them the respect they perhaps deserve when playing as hosts. They are 39-3 SU and 26-16 ATS at some since 2022. At the same time, I don’t think any reasonable handicapper would ever want to penalize any of the 17 teams currently with negative True Home Court Advantage ratings just for playing at home, but to give them the full credit of 3 or more points is also unrealistic.

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 found that the true college basketball number is closer to 3.3 for non-conference games over the last 2-1/2 seasons, but it drops to about 2.9 in conference play. On that latter point, I attribute the familiarity aspect for conference teams on the road being notably greater than for visiting non-conference foes, plus the teams are most often on more similar levels in terms of talent, thus the road team is more comfortable.

I don’t specifically assign my home court ratings in accordance with the True Home Field Rating, as I also give strong consideration to the straight up and ATS records, as well as the perceived difficulty of playing at a particular arena. My overall home court ratings vary between 2.0 and 4.0 points, and I do make adjustments to lower that number about 0.4 points for every conference game.

Let’s take a quick look at some of the other highlights I have found from my college home court advantage study, then stay tuned for tomorrow as I do this exact same exercise for road court performance.

College Basketball Home Court Advantage Study Highlights

· Collectively, the conference with the best overall True Home Court Advantage rating is far and away the Big 12, at +5.34. That is well ahead of the next five conferences, the MEAC (+4.69), Summit (+4.0), Big Ten (+4.0), and WAC (+3.99).

· The conferences with the least True Home Court Advantage in college basketball over the last 2-1/2 seasons have been the Patriot (+0.82), MAAC (+1.68), Big West (+1.87), Southland (+1.92), and MAC (+2.38). If you’re wondering which power conference has shown the least True HCA, that would be the ACC (+3.08).

·  The top 6 conferences in terms of in-conference play True HCA would be the WAC (+4.84), Big 12 (+4.61), Sun Belt (+4.03), Big Ten (+4.01), and MEAC (+4.0). As you can see, there are four of the five conferences that are the same from the overall list. The Sun Belt is the new addition here, meaning teams from that league have enjoyed greater home-court advantage in league play over one another than they have in non-conference action, an interesting handicapping wrinkle.

· If you’re wondering where the media boasts of the SEC stand in terms of what I have found here, that league ranks #6 on both the overall and in-league games in terms of home court performance.

· The same conferences make up the bottom list in terms of in-conference play home court performance. The Patriot (+0.6), Big West (+1.37), Southland (+1.63), and MAAC (+1.75)and those are the four leagues in which there is truly less than 2-points of advantage for hosting a conference foe.

· Four teams have lost just twice at home in college basketball over the last 2-1/2 seasons, all with winning percentages of 93% or better. They are Houston (44-2), Drake (36-2), Akron (32-2), and UNC-Asheville (26-2). As you can see, three of those teams are mid-majors and don’t get the luxury of hosting power conference foes often. Vermont (24-1), Houston (21-1), UNC-Asheville (20-1), and St. Mary’s-CA (19-1) are the best teams at home in league play during that span.

· The worst outright record for any college basketball team at home since the start of the 2022-23 season belongs to IUPUI, at 5-24. Mississippi Valley State (5-18) and VMI (6-21) are the two other schools that have won less than 25% of lined home games. If you’re wondering which power conference team has had the worst record, that would be DePaul at 19-28, including a 3-22 mark in Big East play. That nation’s worst in-conference home record in that same span belongs to Cal Poly-SLO at 2-23.

· Six teams have compiled ATS records of 70% of better in college basketball at home since the start of the 2022-23 season. They are Southern (16-6 ATS), Utah Valley State (22-8 ATS), Southern Miss (22-8 ATS), Bethune-Cookman (18-7 ATS), Troy (23-10 ATS), and Middle Tennessee State (23-10 ATS). Nebraska owns the best in-conference ATS mark in that time span, 19-5 ATS, followed by Southern Miss, MTSU, and Ohio U, all 16-5 ATS.

· Four college basketball teams have been going under 33% ATS over the last 2-1/2 seasons at home. They are Bellarmine (7-22 ATS), Pacific (11-28 ATS), Long Beach State (9-20 ATS), and Prairie View (7-15 ATS). The worst power conference team in this regard has been LSU (16-31 ATS), although another notable team, Memphis, is even worse at 13-26 ATS.

· Only Rice (4-18 ATS), Air Force (5-18 ATS), and Bellarmine (5-16 ATS) are under 25% against the Vegas number in league play since the start of the 2022-23 season, and DePaul, at 6-18 ATS, is the worst home point spread covering team in that span among the power conferences.

· The three teams that have played to the average biggest point spreads at home in recent seasons are no surprise. That list is topped by Houston (-22.2), and followed by Connecticut (-20.4), and Gonzaga (-20.2).

· Three teams have been worse than 8-point average underdogs at home in recent seasons of college basketball and they are Mississippi Valley State (+9.3), VMI (+8.8), and IUPUI (+8.1).

· Five college basketball teams have averaged at least 88.5 PPG in their home games over the last 2-1/2 seasons, and no other team is within 3.5 PPG. They are:
Alabama – 91.4 PPG
Gonzaga – 90.8
Iowa – 89.3
Arizona – 88.8
Kentucky – 88.5

· Four college basketball teams have allowed 58 PPG or fewer in home games since the start of the 2022-23 season. That list includes:
Houston – 50.8 PPG
Virginia – 54.8
Iowa State – 57.3
Tennessee – 57.8

· The only six teams that have outscored opponents by more than 21 PPG at home since 2022 are Houston (+26.8 PPG), Tennessee (+22.2), Iowa State (+21.8), Arizona (+21.8), Connecticut (+21.4), and Alabama (+21.0).

·  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 Home Court Advantage in college basketball over the last 2-1/2 seasons have been:
1. Alabama +9.2
2. Bradley +8.5
3. Houston +8.1
4. Iowa State +7.9
5. Utah Valley State +7.9

·  This is the top list when considering only in-conference games:
1. Alabama +9.8
2. Bradley +8.8
3. Nebraska +8.1
4. Middle Tennessee State +8.0
5. NC Central +7.9

· 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:
1. Loyola-MD -2.2
2. Pacific -1.6
3. Jackson State -1.3
4. Manhattan -1.2
5. Bellarmine -1

·  Similarly, the teams with the worst True Home Court Advantage ratings in conference play have been:
1. Rice -3.6
2. Loyola (MD) -2.5
3. DePaul -2.1
4. American -2.0
5. UC-Santa Barbara -2.0

You will find the entire list of all 364 NCAA D-1 teams and their home-court performance on the chart below with a breakdown by overall and conference games. They are sorted in order of True Home Court Advantage overall rating. Note that I have already made the necessary adjustments to the ratings I employ on my ratings seen on VSiN.com.

VIEW TRUE HOME COURT ADVANTAGE CHART HERE

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Steve Makinen
Steve Makinen
As one of the original founders of StatFox, Steve Makinen has been in the business of sports betting and data analysis for almost 25 years now. In his time in the industry, Steve has worked in a variety of capacities on both sides of the betting counter, from his early days of developing the StatFox business, to almost a decade of oddsmaking consulting for one of the world's leading sportsbooks, to his last seven years as Point Spread Weekly and Analytics Director with VSiN. Steve has always believed that number crunching and handicapping through foundational trends and systems is the secret to success and he shares this data with VSiN readers on a daily basis for all of the major sports.

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