Home Sweet Home: Quantifying Home Court Advantages For NCAA Basketball Statistics

TL;DR

This study quantifies home court advantages in NCAA basketball by analyzing box score data, examining biases in scorekeeping and refereeing, and controlling for various factors across multiple seasons and divisions.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive regression analysis of home court effects and biases, utilizing extensive game data and considering neutral site games to deepen understanding.

Findings

Home teams outperform away teams in nearly all statistics.

Scorekeeper bias is higher for men's games, higher divisions, and stronger teams.

Referee bias increases with crowd size, favoring home teams.

Abstract

Box score statistics are the baseline measures of performance for National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball. Between the 2011-2012 and 2015-2016 seasons, NCAA teams performed better at home compared to on the road in nearly all box score statistics across both genders and all three divisions. Using box score data from over 100,000 games spanning the three divisions for both women and men, we examine the factors underlying this discrepancy. The prevalence of neutral location games in the NCAA provides an additional angle through which to examine the gaps in box score statistic performance, which we believe has been underutilized in existing literature. We also estimate a regression model to quantify the home court advantages for box score statistics after controlling for other factors such as number of possessions, and team strength. Additionally, we examine the biases of scorekeepers and referees. We present evidence that scorekeepers tend to have greater home team biases when observing men compared to women, higher divisions compared to lower divisions, and stronger teams compared to weaker teams. Finally, we present statistically significant results indicating referee decisions are impacted by attendance, with larger crowds resulting in greater bias in favor of the home team.