One of the trickiest parts of predicting the NCAA Tournament is that we simply don’t know all that much about many of the teams participating in it. That’s easy to forget considering the sea of data we are swimming in but all the data in the world doesn’t mean anything if it’s collected poorly. As the old saying goes - garbage in, garbage out. What I mean by that is that the vast majority of NCAA coaches massage their schedules in a way designed to obscure the quality of their teams.

The first thing that will jump out at you when you look at an NCAA schedule is they mostly play home games. The only teams that play the majority of their games on the road are “body bag” teams - the low-major schools who are mainly trying to get a paycheck from bigger schools in order to fill out their home schedule. Most high-major schools will schedule 8-10 body bag games in non-conference play, games whose sole purpose is to pad their win-loss totals and their statistics. A low-major team that consistently outperforms - like OVC regular season champ Murray State - will find it almost impossible to get on the schedule.

As a result, the vast majority of high-major teams enter their conference season with gaudy records which simply don’t mean anything. The non-conference part of the schedule, for the most part, is exhibition season. The numbers you really want to pay attention to come in conference play, where teams are matched up with programs with comparable resources and are forced to play outside the friendly confines of their home gyms. Most high-major programs typically play a couple of high-profile games in November and December but the level of scouting and preparation that goes into those games is nothing compared to annual match-ups against hated conference rivals.

What that means is there’s very little meaningful data to make cross-conference comparisons over the course of the season. People look at Division I as a giant umbrella that covers all 350 teams, but the teams in the Summit League and the teams in the ACC are barely even playing the same sport. Division I is really a collection of 30+ leagues that have their own norms, their own styles of play and their own peculiarities and they all agree to come together and compete in a national tournament at the end of the season. That’s why debates about the strengths of leagues are so contentious in February and March - it mostly comes down to eye test and public perception.

When you are trying to figure out the quality of a team, one simple metric is to look at how they perform on the road. As a rule, high-major teams play only quality teams on the road. No one wants to give a bottom feeder from a low-major conference a chance to pull a monumental upset that people hold against them all season. It’s much easier to win at home than on the road so you don’t want to give bad teams the chance to beat you in their home gym.

A team’s home record can be very deceiving, especially if they were able to rack up some impressive scalps in the process. Kansas State is a good example of that this season. They were 12-4 at home and 1-10 on the road. There were a lot of articles written about how inconsistent Bruce Weber’s team was when the reality is that they were a bad team being propped up by the raucous home crowd in Manhattan which got the chance to jump on some of the best teams in the country. Most D1 programs don’t get Kansas, Baylor, Iowa State, etc. at their home gyms on an annual basis.

When you are on the road, you aren’t getting a lot of calls and you aren’t benefitting from your students intimidating the other team and forcing them into unexpected mistakes. The only thing that matters is the quality of your team and your coaching staff. It’s the team against the world and it’s a much better reflection in to the type of team they really are. When it comes time for the NCAA Tournament, you aren’t going to be playing at home. You are going to be playing on a neutral floor where all your warts will be exposed.

Here are the conference road records of all the teams in the Sweet 16 over the last 10 seasons:

ncaaroad.jpg

The best teams in the country can win on the road almost as easily as they win at home and those are the ones who are likely going to advance in the NCAA Tournament. Here are the road records of all the high-major teams in this year’s field from best to worst:

Kentucky

10-0

Virginia

11-1

Wisconsin

10-2

Duke

9-2

Villanova

9-2

Arizona

8-3

LSU

8-3

Georgia

8-4

Ole Miss

8-4

Notre Dame

7-2

Louisville

7-3

Iowa

7-3

Michigan State

7-4

UNC

7-4

Butler

7-4

Arkansas

7-5

Maryland

6-4

Utah

6-5

Baylor

6-5

Oregon

5-4

Georgetown

5-4

NC State

5-5

Iowa State

5-5

West VA

5-5

Kansas

5-6

Oklahoma

5-6

Providence

5-6

Xavier

5-7

St. John’s

4-6

Ohio State

4-6

Indiana

3-6

Oklahoma State

3-8

UCLA

2-8

Where it gets a little tricky is divvying out the respective strength of the conferences. The numbers are up for interpretation either way. None of the Big 12 teams won more than six games on the road - is that a sign that they were so good that none could separate themselves from the back or that they were too mediocre that none could consistently win on the road? Conversely, the SEC is over-represented at the top of the road standings. Does that mean the conference is better than they were given credit for or that the top teams were able to feast on a bunch of subpar teams at the bottom of the conference? The only real way to know is to see how these teams perform in March on neutral floors.

If you look at the numbers as a whole, though, teams with a .500 or lower record on the road don’t tend to do all that well in the NCAA Tournament. I would be very leery of taking any team at the bottom of that chart too far in my bracket.