There's No Place Like Home
There's No Place Like Home
It was true for Dorothy and it's true for Men's Volleyball.
It’s been a minute since we have checked in on home-court advantage. Let’s start with the high-level number: 62.6%
This is the current winning percentage of home teams this season. This is only slightly above 2023. Last season, home teams won 62.0% of the time.1 To me, that is basically the same. Consistency is a nice thing. It shows that this is what we can likely expect unless something changes.
Now, let’s go a little deeper. Yes, that means more numbers.
Through April 8, 2024, there have been 700 matches played on a non-neutral court. Of those matches, the home team has been favored to win by VBelo 65.4% of the time. Put another way, VBelo gave the edge to home teams two-thirds of the time. This is slightly higher than the actual results but in the same ballpark (so to speak).
When the home team was favored coming into the match, they won 85% of the time! When the away team came in as a favorite, they only won at a 73% rate!
Here is a chart that shows the breakdown between VBelo’s projections and how the result turned out, in terms of home/away.
My takeaway is that it is always good to be favored and playing at home. If you can’t do that, it is still better to be favored and playing away. But you aren’t always favored. So, if I were a coach and I had complete control of my schedule, I would want my toughest matches at home to give my team slightly better odds.
What do you think of home-court advantage? What do you see in these numbers?
Match Recaps
Non-conference
Belmont Abbey (66%) def. Queens (34%)
3-1 (25-23, 25-23, 23-25, 26-24)
Edward Waters (81%) def. Warner (19%)
3-0 (25-16, 25-9, 25-17)
Tusculum (47%) def. King (53%)
3-0 (25-23, 25-21, 25-15)
Springfield (12%) def. Sacred Heart (88%)
3-2 (28-26, 19-25, 27-29, 25-14, 15-13)
Benedict (60%) def. Truett-McConnell (40%)
3-2 (25-22, 23-25, 25-23, 23-25, 15-13)
Match Projections
No matches tomorrow. Weird, right?
If you want more digits, it is actually 62.57% compared to 61.96%. I don’t want to be accused of not providing enough significant digits.
I agree. 1. Schedule tough home sked and of course mix in some cupcakes for the bench to play in. 2. Find some good road venues where the atmosphere will be difficult but winnable. 3. Play the best you can play whenever possible.