On Saturday, Stanford’s Jaylen Blakes hit a short jumper with just over a second left to lead visiting Stanford to a one-point win at UNC. Later in the day and a short drive on I-40 away, Cal won a three-point victory at NC State.
The two wins by California teams, a continent away from home, were a rarity this season.
Home court advantage in North Carolina hasn’t been stronger in a long time, as teams across the state are defending their turf. At the start of the week, six of North Carolina’s 19 Division I men’s basketball teams—Wake Forest, Duke, UNC-Greensboro, UNC-Asheville, Davidson and Elon were unbeaten at home. Sixteen of them had winning records on their home court.
In total, North Carolina teams are 137-40 at home this season, a .774 winning percentage. That’s 36 points higher than the home-court advantage for the other 345 teams in Division I. It’s also a 10-point increase over North Carolina’s home winning percentage last season, when App State led the way with a perfect 15-0 mark at home.
While teams haven’t been better at home in recent memory, they also haven’t been worse when they hit the road. North Carolina teams are 67-113 in all non-home games (including true-road games and contests on neutral courts), for a .372 winning percentage. That’s 71 points lower than last year. The six teams unbeaten at home are a combined 53-0 on their own floor but just 27-31, .466, everywhere else.
Part of the reason that home teams are getting better is the changes in college sports. Teams have been shifting conferences, creating new, larger leagues, which means more travel. The Stanford and Cal wins came in both visiting schools’ first season in the ACC, a season that has seen them rack up the air miles as they come to visit the Atlantic Coast for their league games.
“It feels a lot to me like an NBA travel situation,” said Cal coach Mark Madsen earlier in the season. “The only difference is in the NBA when you go east, typically you have five or six games on the East Coast. We’re going back and forth every (other) week, so in some ways it’s more challenging than an NBA schedule.”
Cal hired a former NASA specialist to come up with ways to better endure the travel.
The new conference setups also mean unfamiliar territories for road teams. The ACC newcomers are making their first trips to Cameron Indoor, the Dean Dome and Lenovo Center, while North Carolina teams are also playing for the first time in strange gyms. It’s perhaps no coincidence that the game-winning shot against the Heels was put up by Blakes, who had made three trips to the Dean Dome as a Duke Blue Devil before transferring this past offseason.
“This is what we signed up for and there’s no sense complaining about it,” Stanford coach Kyle Smith said. “It builds a little mental toughness.”
Here’s a look at the top home court advantages in North Carolina, from smallest to largest.
19. East Carolina (.563 at home over the last two seasons, .350 on the road, a .213 improvement)
18. Duke (.897, .680, .217 improvement): The Blue Devils have done well everywhere, which erodes the impact of the vaunted Cameron advantage.
17. NC A&T (.350, .129, improvement of .221): The opposite of Duke, A&T has struggled everywhere.
16. UNC (.875, .625, plus .250)
15. NC State (.724, .467, plus .257): The Pack is one of two teams, along with Western Carolina, winless away from home this year.
14. UNC Wilmington (.833, .560, plus .273)
13. Western Carolina (.708, .400, plus .308)
12. Gardner Webb (.684, .364, plus .321)
11. Campbell (.600, .269, plus .331)
10. Appalachian State (.917, .571, plus .345): The Mountaineers boast the third-highest home winning percentage over the last two years.
9. Elon (.714, .367, plus .348)
8. UNC-Greensboro (.857, .500, plus .357)
7. High Point (.931, .571, plus .360): Owners of the top home winning percentage in North Carolina.
6. Davidson (.731, .333, plus .397)
5. Charlotte (.720, .320, plus .400)
4. NC Central (.773, .333, plus .439)
3. UNC-Asheville (.913, .467, plus .446)
2. Queens (.809, .290, plus .519)
1. Wake Forest (.929, .360, plus .569). World beaters at home, the Deacs have the second-highest home winning percentage, but they’re a perennial bubble team due to their struggles everywhere else.
“For us to get to where we want to be, we have to win more on the road,” said coach Steve Forbes. “We obviously are a really good home team. We have the second most wins in college basketball at home in the last three years.”
