Sainthood

From the Weekend Attendance Files
--Auburn 63, Alabama State 60. The Tigers slipped past the Hornets after A-State shot a pitiful 28% in the second half. A full 4,663 were on hand to witness the brickfest and near upset. The Hornets averaged 2,599 last season.
--at Siena 79, Stanford 67. Attendance: 6,274. Siena saveraged 5,834 last season, and did not quite sell out Pespsi Arena (8,000+). The telling stat: the Saints shot 32 free throws to Stanford's three. Now THAT is what I call home court advantage!
--Oregon 85, at Portland 61. The Pilots clicked 4,881 through the turnstiles, and they only avergaed 1,941 last season. That was not enough to stop the Quack Attack. I wonder how many of the nearly 5k were wearing Duck yellow and green?

Tonight's GOI
--Belmont at Alabama. Bruins already have road wins over Cincinnati and Samford.
--Auburn at Charleston Southern. The Tigers barely escaped Alabama State with a win. Watching attendance here.
--Missouri vs Michigan State. Resurgent Tigers looking to make national noise with a win here.
--Maryland vs UCLA. Both of these teams figure heavily into America's March travel plans.
--LSU vs Oklahoma State. Both of these programs have been high recently, but suffered trying time last season...and OK State's continued at North Texas in their last outing.
--Winthrop vs Baylor. The Eagles have proved their mettle. Is this the year Scott Drew and Baylor break through? Notre Dame is convinced.
--Georgia Tech vs Notre Dame. No one likes losing two in a row in these faraway tourneys, but one of these teams is going to do just that.

Mean Green Come Through

Last Night's GOI
--at North Texas 82, Oklahoma State 73. The Mean Green come through! More evidence that these are sunnier days in the Sun Belt. Oh yeah, the attendance was 6,793. NT averaged 2,063 last year, so this more than tripled that average.
--North Carolina 72, Davidson 68. The Wildcats were in position to take down UNC, but it slipped away. Rest assured, this is not the last we will hear from Stephen Curry and the Cats.
--at Sam Houston 56, Texas Tech 54. The BearKats nipped Bob Knight's boys in another non-power win over a Big 12 team. Lo, and behold, another attendance anomaly: 4,842. This was the third largest crown in Johnson Coliseum history. SHSU averaged 1,967 last year, so this was more than double that average.

Tonight's GOI
Attendance Watch
--Southern Cal at The Citadel. No one really expects The Citadel to pull this off, but fans should show up in droves nonetheless and give them every chance to do so.

2k Sports Classic
--Gardner-Webb vs UConn. Some folks in Kentucky are going to watch this one with great longing for the Big Apple.
--Oklahoma vs Memphis. The Tigers are a heavy favorite to win this tourney.
--Michigan at Georgetown. Big early test for new-look Wolverines. G'town is primed for another monster year.
--Clemson at Mississippi State. Two teams that could easily be Bubble Boys come March. Both need games this one.

"Upset" Alerts

We have a few candidates for our little experiment tracking abnormally large crowds at non-power schools on the slate tonight:

Washington State at Boise State
Alabama at Mercer
Vanderbilt at Toledo
Nevada at UC-Irvine

Of course, it is unknown how the attendance at these games will stack up to the average season attendance until later, but these are good "upset" candidates. Most intriguing is Alabama at Mercer, as the Bears are coming off a HUGE road pasting of Southern Cal. They will be riding high and the buzz surrounding them should help them pack University Center (3,200) tonight.

The "big" schools will be favored in all of these games. But, a win or two (I'm thinking Mercer is most likely) by the underdogs would not surprise TBB one bit.

Tonight's Other GOI
--Xavier at Miami-OH. The X always have NCAA hopes, but games like this one are necessary for the at-large profile.

A Season-Long Experiment

My rooting interest lies with the WKU Hilltoppers. I have spent the last two months lamenting the schedule. It is not a terrible schedule in terms of quality, mind you, it's the timing of the games that has me worried. See, much of the Sun Belt is also in the Bible Belt, and that means that Wednesday night games conflict with church for a healthy portion of our community (we have four Wednesday night tips this season). That means fewer big home crowds for the Tops. Further, the Toppers play a whopping nine games away from home on Saturday nights. My question is, do these things matter?

I am not a mathematician or a statistician, so I may not be able to prove causation, but we can certainly see if there is a correlation between crowd attendance and losing on the road. I am interested to examine several things:

1. Does playing on the road on Saturday (presumably facing larger crowds than weeknight games) increase a team's chance of losing a road game?
2. Ken Pomeroy has demonstrated that home court advantage in a broad sense is often overblown. But, I'm not sure his data shows us that spiked attendance at "big games" does not matter. Of course, Duke and Kentucky and several other teams are almost always going to have a big crowd on hand. We already know it's tough to win there on any night. I am more interested in...
3. Do teams perform better statistically when the crowd is bigger? Do they "pull the upset" with a bigger crowd on hand? For example, does San Francisco "overperform" when Gonzaga comes to town and a big crowd is on hand?

It should be interesting to track this over the course of the season. Of course, the numbers will not mean much, statistically speaking, until late in the season when the RPI and Sagarin can help provide some baselines.