Comments on: RTC Bracket Prep: East Region

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 08:53:10 +0000

True on the home environment. But those teams are usually playing from a one seed anyway and ones rarely lose on the first weekend regardless of site. We have to let the NCAA make a little money from ticket sales!

A 1 seed last lost on the opening weekend in 2004 when both Kentucky and Stanford fell. A curiosity: from 1993 9 seeds have a winning record vs. 8 seeds 36-32. But despite fewer opportunities, 8 seeds have won twice as many games against 1s. 8s have 6 wins, while 9s have only 3 in that time period.

By: rtmsf

rtmsf — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:37:37 +0000

In reply to Dave Smith.

Dave – I don’t have a regression analysis to back this up, but I think you see it in two situations. First is when there is a true home environment, such as the case where Syracuse is playing in Buffalo and can pack the place with their fans. A similar situation is when UNC/Duke have their first two rounds in Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte, etc. They never lose those games, and I would argue in part it’s due to those homecourt advantages. The second case is when you have western teams who have to travel east, especially if they play an early game (like 9am PT). I’ve seen that one happen several times b/c they’re just so sluggish to start the game that they are out before they get their legs under them. Those are just anecdotes, though. By and large, I don’t know that being 500 vs. 1500 miles away from home matters all that much, which you referred to.

By: Dave Smith

Dave Smith — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:03:53 +0000

Great info. Thanks. i have to quibble with comments on teams playing near or far from home. New Mexico doesn’t exactly “reside on the West Coast.” It’s a long drive from San Jose! Once you’re over an 8-10 hour drive, the distance from home is nearly irrelevant to most fans; they have to get on an airplane whether its a two-hour flight or a four-hour flight. I ran an analysis a couple years ago of team performance in NCAA tournaments based on the number of time zones a team played from home and could find no correlation between wins and losses and time zones from home. Everybody assumes it’s relevant and talks about it, but it means nothing as far as I can tell. It probably ticks off coaches and players that they have to travel, but it seems not to effect how they play. Maybe a more accomplished statistician than I would tackle this problem someday.