Posts tagged ‘Power Rankings’

There’s just one week left before the Big East Tournament, but so much has not been decided — at the top, bottom and middle of the conference.

We are the champions: Before the season, folks were about split about who they thought the best team in the Big East was. Four months later, and it appears that those two teams will play for the right to call itself the best when Louisville travels to Washington to play Georgetown on Saturday. Both teams are 14-3 in conference and off in this mid-week and therefore have about a week to prepare. Georgetown will have to figure out how it can get an inside game going that will earn it more than the four free throws the Hoyas shot in Louisville a month ago. Louisville will just be trying to cap a tremendous run of excellent basketball. The Cardinals have won nine straight, including a 14-point win over Villanova on Sunday.

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The first week of Big East conference play is in the books with 14 games, and two trends stand out: home-court advantage and 3-point shooting. Home teams are 11-3 and the team with the better 3-point percentage is a remarkable 13-1. Here’s a look at why, followed by Court Visions’ latest power rankings.Home-court: We discussed the increased importance of home-court advantage since the expansion of the Big East in a February post last season. To update what I wrote at the time, here’s a look at the winning percentages of home teams in the Big East over the last 10 years (the first two coming before the expansion):

* Twelve-team Big East after Miami (Fla.) and Virginia Tech’s departure.
** First year of 16-team Big East.
*** Through just 14 games.

My hypothesis last season was that, when the five new teams played the 11 old ones, the home team was far more successful than otherwise. All three road wins this season have come by teams playing opponents who were in the same conference before the expansion — Cincinnati over Louisville, Connecticut over Seton Hall and Georgetown over Rutgers. When the old 11 played the new five, the home team was 7-0. In other games, the home team is 4-3 — interesting.

It’s obviously too early to assume that nearly 80 percent of home teams will win their Big East conference games this season, but it’s not too early to estimate that two-thirds of home teams will be victors. This makes every road win especially precious. If the dominance of home court teams continues, you can almost consider a road win a break in serve, which makes the league standings only instructive if it includes the number of games played at home and on the road. With that in mind, I’m going to use a plus-minus system to include with a team’s record — plus-one for a road win, minus-one for a home loss.

In that system, six teams have been given or docked points. Here they are:

Cincinnati +1
Connecticut +1
Georgetown +1
Louisville -1
Rutgers -1
Seton Hall -1

To bring home the importance of road wins, any team who can end up on the plus side of this ledger will have a serious case for an NCAA Tournament bid.

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