Home/away

[cbraddy]

every year. I lose every away game except maybe one. No matter how good my team is or how bad the away team is. Whoever is the home team wins.

[cbraddy]

And also, if I unclick the game and just sim the away games I will actually win some. But if I “play” it, it’s a blow out almost every single time.

[WarEagle13]

I have often felt like this too...but recently began to research and read a bit about NCAA Basketball and the home court advantage it appears to have.

These are some numbers from the 2018-19 real life totals for the teams :

353 teams - 1740 wins / 3186 losses (35%) ------ Avg per team 4.9 wins / 9.0 losses

Interestingly and expectedly, splitting the 353 teams into thirds (top 117, mid 188, low 188) the results are :

Top 1/3 (117 teams) - 920 wins / 647 losses (59%) ----- Avg per team 7.9 wins / 5.5 losses
Mid 1/3 (118 teams) - 566 wins / 1093 losses (34%) ----- Avg per team 4.8 wins / 9.3 losses
Low 1/3 (118 teams) - 254 wins / 1446 losses (15%) ----- Avg per team 2.1 wins / 12.3 losses

Even more interestingly, to the top 1/3 and low 1/3 and split then :

Top 1/6 (58 teams) - 515 wins / 235 losses (69%) ----- Avg per team 8.9 wins / 4.1 losses
Low 1/6 (58 teams) - 70 wins / 762 losses (8%) ----- Avg per team 1.2 wins / 13.1 losses

[WarEagle13]

every year. I lose every away game except maybe one. No matter how good my team is or how bad the away team is. Whoever is the home team wins.

Who are you playing as? Top Major Conference team, Mid-Majorteam?

[PointGuard]

Interesting analysis, WarEagle. I'd never broken down things like you have, but I have compared overall winning percentage at home by DDSCB vs real life and they are pretty close to the same.

cbraddy: I've played the game a lot and my experience has been different that yours. I've not encountered such a dramatic away loss record as you seem to have encountered. If you have a bad team, yes they probably will lose most of their away games (as logically you'd expect), but if they are good or so-so, their road record generally improves. And, while I've never analyzed if my team is more successful when i play a game vs when I sim a game, my gut feeling is that there isn't all that much difference but that playing a game "seems" to give me a little better chance of winning than simming it. Like I said, I've not analyzed that since it would take a lot of replaying individual games without saving the results. While I MIGHT have the patience to replay a game many times by simming it, I don't want to do a bunch of replays when I actually coach the game.

[cbraddy]

I’m playing as California, there still in the rebuilding phase. But will beat Oregon (top 10 team in my save) at home and get absolutely destroyed by Washington State away (averages about 5 wins a season the past 4 years)

I understand away games are tough, and home games are easier but I feel it’s still just a little overpowered. I had no business beating Oregon/UCLA/ even USC at home. And when I played them away they beat me by 20-40 points.

[C-Bailey24]

I’m playing as California, there still in the rebuilding phase. But will beat Oregon (top 10 team in my save) at home and get absolutely destroyed by Washington State away (averages about 5 wins a season the past 4 years)

I understand away games are tough, and home games are easier but I feel it’s still just a little overpowered. I had no business beating Oregon/UCLA/ even USC at home. And when I played them away they beat me by 20-40 points.

You're wasting you're time. I made a thread about this two or three versions ago and all they care about is that the median numbers fall into place. The point of your posts is not just the bottom line of wins and losses but the quality of play of your team when on the road. The gap is to wide and has been this way going back a few versions now. It's like the road team has been programmed to forget how to play basketball. As you mentioned, in conference play you can play the same team twice and regularly get two lopsided scores depending on who's at home and who's on the road. Wash, rinse, repeat. Haven't played the game in awhile but when i was if my team was on the road close games or nail-biters were very few and far between. I have no problem losing, but constantly losing by 15+ points on the road kills some immersion. And no my team is not a bottom feeder, and no this doesn't just happen against the top team in the conference, and no it's not my strategy because i can play that same team later in the schedule with the exact same strategy and lineup and blow them out on my floor. It's time to stop the excuses and really examine and tweak this aspect of the game.

[PointGuard]

I tend to agree that thereare too many 15-25 point lop-sided wins and too few 1-10 point-difference games. Not sure how easy it is to fix that but hopefully it can be looked at.

I'll copy and put the entire thread in the list of suggestions I'm keeping to pass along to Gary when he begins work on CB2020.


[10/3: OK...added the entire conversation to the suggestions list.]

[alternativestats]

I will also chime in on this issue. Just to give you an idea of what this looks like as the first year head coach of California Baptist in the WAC. My team at this point is 7-14 (5-5). 6-2 at home, 1-12 on the road. Let's discount non-conference because you don't play home/away.

Since the start of conference play my team has done the following

Beat Chicago State at home 68-56
Lost @ Texas-Rio Grande Valley 71-88
Beat #17 New Mexico state at home 75-61 (This is New Mexico State's only loss in conference play)
Lost @ Utah Valley 85-88
Lost at home to UMKC 78-79
Won @ Grand Canyon 81-73
Beat Cal State Bakersfield at home 80-74
lost @ Seattle 72-89
Lost @ Chicago State 66-83 (A 29 point swing in home/away)
beat Texas-Rio Grande Valley at home 85-73 (Also a 29 point swing in home/away)

So, there is a stretch in the middle of close games that include a home loss and a road win. But I think the issue comes in the splits between Texas Rio Grande Valley and Chicago State. Plus, while it's not impossible that the conference bottom feeder could get a home upset win over a ranked team... it shouldn't have been by 15. I expect that when I play the rematch it will be close to a 20 point loss. I also expect the Seattle home game to have a wide swing based on my experience.