How Much Is It Worth?

Home Court.



In football, we have heard claims that home field is worth 3-7 points. Hard to know or prove.



In basketball, it seems to be worth 7 or more vs truly neutral and 15 for home vs away.



I base that math off limited data. Earlier this season, I looked up odds for BYU at LMU and Pepperdine and then a week later looked up odds for the return visits. I was shocked at the swings. Assuming odds makers have studied this a bit, I took that as a data point.



Then we played the games and actually experienced huge swings with both opponents.



We played away from Provo a ton this year, so far. Most of the neutral sites were not neutral either.



We nearly always win in Provo, but lost more than half of the road games.

Utah wins at home and almost always loses on the road. Unfortunately, we played them at their place.



How much impact has this had? Can we use our road results to predict upcoming games vs the same teams?



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15 points is definitely too high. Also, it has to be a highly variable data point depending on the teams paying. I believe sagarin and others have setup odds adjusted for home vs away, but I don't know their formula.

Hard to say. Player could be really comfortable in his gym and completely uncomfortable on the road. I'd on average probably about 10 pts.



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This is very limited data. My cell phone is my computer these days.



We lost to LMU on the road by 11 and then won in Provo by 23 for a 34 point swing in games two weeks apart. I think this swing is an outlier. Not typical. But indicative that home court advantage is not insignificant.



We lost to Pepperdine on the road by 6. We beat them in Provo by 12 for an 18 point swing. Outlier? Typical?



Rather than average these two data points, and claim it makes a 26 point difference, I will await the additional data that will unfold as we complete conference play.



Or one of our data guys could crunch the WCC 2012/13 season and report in. Who knows, maybe I will do it manually.



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WCC 2012/13



Opponent. Home. Away. Spread.

LMU. +41. +13. 28

USF. -12. +4. -16

Pepperdine. +25. +2. 23

SCU. +17. +18. -1

SMC. -1. -7. 6

SD. +17. -6. 23. Also -3 Neutral.

Zags. -5. -20. 15

Port. +14. +18 -4





Ok.



3 series turned out 1, 4, or 16 points better on the road - USF, SCU, and Portland.

5 series turned out 6 to 28 points better at home.

BYU played SD in WCC tournament on a somewhat neutral floor. Home court vs neutral was a 20 point swing.



Average Home vs Away swing including the negatives



74/8= 9.25 point swing on average.



Factor in the WCC tournament game and the home vs not home swing exceeds 10 points.



Anyone have other data or sources?



One other thing jumps right out - the WCC teams are more competitive in 2014 so far.



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Before this WCC home stand started to even things out, BYU played in Provo 9 times and away from Provo 13 times.



Try comparing that to the Ute who not only played cupcakes prior to conference play, but nearly always in SLC.



The limited data set above would indicate that BYU gave up 40 points vs an even home ad away schedule.



Considering that many past teams and teams that we like to compare ourselves to schedule more home than away games - maybe we gave up even more. In 2006, for example, 17 home vs 13 away games.



That seems to be a lot to give up when you are also playing a number of decent to excellent teams.



Maybe we are too critical of our team, players, and coaches.



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According to KenPom, here is what he predicts for BYU's final 7 games based on his statistical formula (which I confess I do not understand completely, but there is a lot of it. Probably how Spiff envisions heaven ;)



Predicted Score Previous Result



vs Santa Clara: 87-71 win 91-81 road win

vs San Francisco: 91-79 win 83-76 road win

@ Pacific: 87-85 win 88-78 home win

@ St. Mary's: 78-80 loss 84-71 home win

vs Gonzaga: 80-79 win 69-84 road loss

vs Portland: 89-78 win 110-114 road loss

@ San Diego: 75-73 win 87-53 home win



My quick and unscientific analysis is that home court is worth 6-10 points. Go Cougars!

Wolverine wrote:
According to KenPom, here is what he predicts for BYU's final 7 games based on his statistical formula (which I confess I do not understand completely, but there is a lot of it. Probably how Spiff envisions heaven ;)



Predicted Score Previous Result



vs Santa Clara: 87-71 win 91-81 road win. Spread is 6

vs San Francisco: 91-79 win 83-76 road win. Spread is 5

@ Pacific: 87-85 win 88-78 home win. Spread is 8

@ St. Mary's: 78-80 loss 84-71 home win Spread is 15

vs Gonzaga: 80-79 win 69-84 road loss. Spread is 16

vs Portland: 89-78 win 110-114 road loss Spread is 15

@ San Diego: 75-73 win 87-53 home win. Spread is 32



My quick and unscientific analysis is that home court is worth 6-10 points. Go Cougars!

Added some calcs above. 97 total spread on 7 games = 14 points when rounded.



It is interesting to see the variation by team. There could be key injuries factored in. I would guess seasoned veteran opponents vary less home vs away than inexperienced opponents. Maybe distance travelled. Maybe playing Saturday on 2 days rest vs Thursday on 5 days rest. I do not know these teams and schedules well enough to know what drives his predictions. Real data from Peppers one and LMU also varied widely as did the data from last season.



It does look like a double digit factor.



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The prediction above by the experts for SCU@BYU was very close. He predicted a 15 point victory. It ended up as a 13 point margin although I had the sense that BYU let off the gas and could have made it much larger.



By the numbers, Home court gave a 13 point win vs the 10 point road win, so only a 3 point spread.

We beat USF by 7 on the road, but only by 5 at home. Our shooting was terrible.



In this case Home Court provided no advantage - actually a 2 point disadvantage.



The value of home court is on a downward trend ....wait.....slide.



We will see what UOP brings. We beat them by 10 in Provo. I sure hope this match - up does not end up being a 10 - point swing.



We beat SMC in Provo by 13. We could survive a 12 point swing.



Now when the Zags come to Provo, we need a 16 point swing.



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According to predictionmachine.com homecourt advantage in NCAA men's basketball is 3.7 points on average. But they also broke it out by team. According to their calculations, BYU's homecourt advantage is 2.1 points.



So there you have it, any road game we lost by a bucket, we would have won, if we'd played it at home.



Link: http://predictionmachine.com/college-basketball-homecourt-advantage" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Hawk



That is an interesting model. They indicate extremely fast paced teams are more able to control pace at home and that altitude is a big factor - Denver, UVU, USA near the top. They say average teams with good fan support vary more widely. Good teams vary less. Then they place BYU near the bottom - perhaps thinking of BYU as being University of California at Provo, or of Great Salt Lake being sea level or that BYU is a really good team. ;)



But, Hawk, with all due respect - times 2 in your case - and let me preface this by saying the explanation is buried in the details and could be much more clearly explained, but the numbers are their perceived advantage of Provo vs Neutral. For Home Vs Away, you need to add the number for both teams to get the total swing.



Please do not ask me for a link or quote. This clarification, although somewhat muddled, is in the opening remarks at the link you provided.



But this link has interesting info about why the swing varies by team.



Altitude

Extreme Pace of Play

Great teams play well home and away

Average teams with good fan support vary more widely

etc.



Injuries and other lineup issues trump all of that.



The data also goes way back. I think it said 2000. It would seem that teams vary from year to year. This factor makes this data less valuable in that respect but more legitimate in other ways.



They indicate a 60% accuracy in predicting home vs neutral based on this data but acknowledge a lower success predicting home vs away based on it.



I hope it is wrong. Zags are listed as a 1 point swing giving only a 3-4 point total swing playing BYU.



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We beat UOP by 10 at home in a game that was not really even that close. Pacific finished with an 8-1 run in garbage time.



We lost to Pacific by 7 in Stockton.



17 point swing - home Vs away.



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The answer of average home/away point swing was already answered. I'm not seeing the benefit to listing the point difference between every home and away game, since only one poster seems to be contributing to this thread, it's time for it to be put to sleep.