I used math to fill out my NCAA basketball brackets. But to keep things interesting, I picked the underdog whenever they were within striking distance of the favorite.
> Let’s take a closer look at home field advantage. In the 2024-25 NCAA men’s basketball season, the average scoring margin favored the home team by an average of about 9 points.
That's going to be affected by good teams having more home games against bad teams, right? Top schools tend to pay cupcakes to come play them as one-offs, rather than scheduling home and homes. Take Auburn, for example:
Auburn played 15 home games to 10 away games; their non-conference home games were exclusively against teams that they out-classed: a 32 point win over FAU, a 51 point win over Vermont, a 23 point win over Kent St, a 33 point win over North Alabama, a 44 point win over Richmond, a 41 point win over Georgia State, and a 29 point win over Monmouth. They played one non-conference away game at Duke, and the rest of their non-conference schedule was neutral site. Is that inflating the apparent home court advantage?
You're absolutely right, Tom. And I admit that at the end of the paragraph: "I acknowledge that both of these margins would probably decrease if I looked exclusively at intra-conference games."
I didn't see a quick way to compute the margin for intra-conference games, so I used all games as a proxy.
I do think the impact of home-field advantage for non-conference games is smaller than you might think, since the major conferences tend to host more games, which would have the effect of deflating the indices of the non-major teams.
Maybe. But nearly half of Auburn's home games were non-conference cupcakes. Same for Duke. It's a big chunk of the data. I don't necessarily think the conclusions are invalid where it counts, though - the teams at the top of your rankings are mostly going to play similar schedules in that regard.
Great post again. What if you left lambda as a free parameter in your regression? Just think it might be interesting to check (and for the football).
Note: this is the question I had last time but I think you misinterpreted it (and instead answered a probably more interesting question)
> Let’s take a closer look at home field advantage. In the 2024-25 NCAA men’s basketball season, the average scoring margin favored the home team by an average of about 9 points.
That's going to be affected by good teams having more home games against bad teams, right? Top schools tend to pay cupcakes to come play them as one-offs, rather than scheduling home and homes. Take Auburn, for example:
Auburn played 15 home games to 10 away games; their non-conference home games were exclusively against teams that they out-classed: a 32 point win over FAU, a 51 point win over Vermont, a 23 point win over Kent St, a 33 point win over North Alabama, a 44 point win over Richmond, a 41 point win over Georgia State, and a 29 point win over Monmouth. They played one non-conference away game at Duke, and the rest of their non-conference schedule was neutral site. Is that inflating the apparent home court advantage?
You're absolutely right, Tom. And I admit that at the end of the paragraph: "I acknowledge that both of these margins would probably decrease if I looked exclusively at intra-conference games."
I didn't see a quick way to compute the margin for intra-conference games, so I used all games as a proxy.
I do think the impact of home-field advantage for non-conference games is smaller than you might think, since the major conferences tend to host more games, which would have the effect of deflating the indices of the non-major teams.
Maybe. But nearly half of Auburn's home games were non-conference cupcakes. Same for Duke. It's a big chunk of the data. I don't necessarily think the conclusions are invalid where it counts, though - the teams at the top of your rankings are mostly going to play similar schedules in that regard.
At some point before 2026 March Madness I'll determine values for parameters that historically best predict the tournament.