Home/Away Records

Another issue to keep in mind during the Tournament is the fact that teams often play a lot better at home than on the road. All Tournament games, of course, are on neutral courts, although crowds often turn into hostile away-like crowds against the favorite. The point being, often teams earn high seeds on strong wins at home. If these same teams have really struggled on the road all season, you should be careful about picking them in the Tournament, because they are probably going to under-perform.

When you are looking for teams that have performed well on the road, you have to be careful to compare it to the home records. If teams play easy schedules then they're going to win a lot of their games, at home and on the road. For example, Davidson's 14-6 road/neutral record looks nice until you look at their 11-0 home record. Davidson, specifically, is actually a bad example because of their schedule. That neutral schedule is made up of those games against UNC, UCLA and the other powerhouses they played. They lost to all of the elite teams that they played, and beat all of the bad/mediocre teams (save one, back in November), regardless of home/away status.

But for the most part, we can separate teams that have vastly better home records than road/neutral records. And for the most part, major conference teams play similar talent on the home and road, so that record difference won't simply be caused by differing levels of talent. So if all you're considering is home vs. road/neutral records, who do you bet on (ignoring small conference teams with little-or-no chance at winning a game)?


Likely to over-achieve:
North Carolina
Washington State
Wisconsin
Butler
Saint Joseph's
Baylor

Likely to under-achieve
Vanderbilt
Pittsburgh
Michigan State
Arkansas
Miami
Kansas State
Oregon
Kentucky