016: 🏀 Home court advantage in the ACC
Home results for the last five regular season ACC men's basketball games.
The ACC is having a drama filled season in men’s hoops (and women’s too!). The officiating has become a major storyline, coaches are accusing league members of buying teams, and the NET and other advanced metrics show the league is weak.
The home court advantage is important, especially because it’s nearly impossible to gain a Quadrant 1 win without winning on the road. And teams are winning fewer games on the road than a season ago.
The home team has won 63.5 percent of games in ACC play this season. 73 wins and 42 losses with 45 league games remaining in the regular season.
Last season, the home team won 83 of 150 regular season games or about 55 percent.
During the shortened COVID campaign in 2021, the home team won a whopping 66.1 percent of games while many arenas welcomed no fans or limited attendance.
The home team won about 61 percent (91 of 150 games) during the 2020 regular season. This was the first season teams played 20 league games (10 at home).
And in 2019, the last season in which ACC teams played only 18 regular season games, the home team won about 59 percent of regular season games.
Outside of the wacky 2021 regular season, the home team is winning at a better clip this year than in past seasons.
The home team is also winning a higher percentage of close1 games too. If we define close games by contests decided by five or fewer points, the home team has won 22 of 37 close games this season or 59.5 percent.
This is up from 46.3 percent last season.
These close games have become more common over the past few seasons. After only 31 games (23 percent of regular season games) in 2019 were close, the 2022 regular season saw 54 close games (36 percent) and we’ve already seen 37 close games this season (32 percent).
While the close games are more frequent, the league has seen two games decided by 40 or more points this season already. Here are the three largest point differentials over the past five regular seasons:
45 points (North Carolina 99, Louisville 54 in 2021, home win)
43 points (Duke 86, Georgia Tech 43 in 2023, away win)
40 points (Clemson 94, Florida State 54 in 2023, home win)
And below is a list of the point differential in all games sorted by season and if the home team won or lost.
Virginia owns the best league home win percentage over the past five regular seasons. Imagine after the debacle at JPJ last weekend, the home court is worth about four points. The last time Carolina won in Charlottesville, Hubert Davis worked at ESPN.
Duke is the only other league school with fewer than 10 losses at home. And five of Florida State’s 10 home losses in league play have come this season.
Here are the other home records by school since the 2018-19 season:
5 or fewer points is arbitrary, so please keep that in mind.
Check out the code for these tables and charts. And here is a CSV with all the data too.