The Gray Pages

Monday, March 27, 2006

An entertaining farce is still a farce

GMU's win suggests that all college basketball is a farce. Duke hasn't been the best team for the past ten years, they've just played the most home games. (How often are tournament games played in North Carolina?) Play the tournament on the Gonzaga campus, Gonzaga wins. Play it in Indianapolis and watch the Hoisers succeed.

There's no best teams: there are home teams (which win), and there are road teams (which lose).

posted by Josh at Monday, March 27, 2006

8 Comments:

  • Duke won this year at Indiana, at Texas, at Wake Forest, at Maryland, at Boston College and at North Carolina -- all ranked teams. Was there a single team this year that did better on the road? (I doubt it.)

    If George Mason beat Connecticut because of the home crowd advantage at the Verizon Center, why did they lose at home to Hofstra before the tournament started? And why did Hofstra end its season by losing -- at HOME -- its NIT game to Old Dominion?

    By Blogger dl004d, at 10:15 AM  

  • Pulling out individual games is shabby research, so I'm sorry that I started us down this road. Get me winning percentages for all home teams. Because I'm going to guess it's about 80 percent. In baseball, it's probably 55 percent.

    By Blogger Josh, at 10:18 AM  

  • Why don't they ever post NCAA standings like this? Are they afraid to find out what showing home/road splits would show?

    By Blogger Josh, at 10:20 AM  

  • You implied that Duke can't win outside North Carolina -- I showed they were the best road team this past season.

    As for the rest of it, you're right -- you can't tell anything by looking at a few single games. And that's why people shouldn't read too much into George Mason's last few wins. Any good team can win a few games in a row. Really. Also, I believe George Mason made no substitutions from 10 minutes left in the game through overtime. I doubt they could get through a season playing like that.

    By Blogger dl004d, at 10:43 AM  

  • Duke and Memphis were 11-2 on the road this year (Duke's record includes at least three road wins in North Carolina); George Washington was 10-1, UConn 10-2, Gonzaga 10-3, UCLA 9-3, George Mason 9-5. And for each, except GW, the road losses accounted for at least half, if not more, of their overall losses. But that proves nothing, only that I only quickly looked at some of the conference champions and did a hand tally of road records.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:31 PM  

  • though I will say, Josh is right it looks like. Duke played the most home games this year, going 21-2 at home. Looks like Mempis, according to my rought estimate, was 22-2 at home Looks like UConn would be next at 20-2 at home. Looks like all three played about 5-7 more games overall, mostly at home, than most Div. I schools, on average. But I'm just eyeballing things on Yahoo's conference standings page.
    (I really should get back to work)

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:42 PM  

  • d'oh. I meant to edit that. I looked up the Memphis numbers after writing Duke played the most home games. That's obvious not true. It was Memphis.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:43 PM  

  • The Cliff's Notes version of what Mike said is that I'm right.

    By Blogger dl004d, at 8:50 AM  

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