Does the Final Four location matter?

Last week we talked about favorites dominating this year’s NCAA tournament and nothing changed over the weekend.

Favorites of 8 or more points stand at a perfect 21-0 straight up (SU) in March Madness 2025!

For the first time ever, favorites went 12-0 SU in the Sweet Sixteen and Elite Eight. This produced a Final Four of all #1 seeds for only the second time in tournament history.

In looking for an unexplored betting edge amongst the dominant remaining teams, I noticed something interesting in Nate Silver’s tournament prediction model: his most likely winner was Houston, not Duke (consistently favored by sportsbooks and betting markets).

He explained this aberration, which happened despite Duke being his highest rated team, occurring “because the Final Four will be played in San Antonio, creating a quasi home-court advantage for the Cougars”.

This week I’ll dive into the question of whether proximity to fan base can create a home-court advantage on a neutral site Final Four matchup.

As always, we’ll use our research to make college basketball bets of the week!

Let’s get after it.

Final Four “Home Court” History

While teams playing near home in the Final Four often garner attention for potential advantages, we are not concerned about their history of winning outright. Rather, we want to know how they perform relative to expectations (and specifically point spreads).

Houston will be the ninth team since 1965 to play a Final Four game (or two) in their home state. Looking at the most recent examples we see the following:

1. Butler 2010 (2-0 vs the spread) - Butler played the semifinal, and then championship game, just five miles from its campus in Indianapolis. Butler narrowly covered as a 1.5 point favorite against Michigan St. in their Final Four matchup. Although Duke won the championship 61-59, Butler covered the 7-point spread comfortably (and almost won).

2. Michigan State 2009 (1-1 vs the spread) - Michigan State played two games in Detroit, just 90 miles from campus. They won outright as a 4.5 underdog in their first game. Despite the proximity advantage, they were blown out by North Carolina 89-72 in the final, failing to cover the 7.5-point spread.

3. Duke 1994 (1-1 vs the spread) - Duke played twice in Charlotte, 140 miles from campus. They won by 5, advancing but not covering, as a 6.5 point favorite over Florida in the Final Four. They lost, but covered the spread, as a 5 point underdog vs Arkansas in the final.

While seven of the previous eight teams playing near home won their Final Four game, none have ended up overall champion since UCLA in 1975.

I find this data interesting, but inconclusive.

Broader Research on Home Court

Steve Makinen from Vsin recently wrote an interesting assessment of “True Home Court Advantage” across college basketball for the past 2.5 years.

He compared teams’ power ratings at the time of each matchup to create a “predicted” margin of victory.

He then compared this predicted margin with actual outcomes to place an “advantage value” on each team’s home court.

The values ranged from +9.2 for Alabama to -2.2 for Loyola-MD.

Here’s where this gets interesting!

In Makinen’s research, the conference with the best overall “True Home Court Advantage” rating was far and away the Big 12, at +5.34 points.

Houston plays in the Big 12.

Even more noteworthy, by reviewing the full chart this research produced, we see Houston has the 3rd highest rating of all college basketball teams (!!), producing outcomes 8.1 points better than power rankings would have predicted when playing at home.

While I think playing in a massive football stadium like this year’s Alamodome may dilute the crowd-noise edge Houston gets at the Fertitta Center (their typical home court), this data is moving me closer to Nate Silver’s point of view.

Betting Trends Check

Lastly, like last week, I’ ll do a quick check of Juice Reel’s Sharpmush to see how the Houston vs. Duke game is being bet so far.

All things being equal, I prefer being aligned with the sportsbooks (the side with less money bet), and the smart bettors (the Sharpmush skew).

First, I see 22 times more money being bet on Duke’s money line than I see on Houston.

Second, I see the best 20% of bettors shading toward Houston a bit more frequently than the worst bettors.

Both of these data points leave me comfortable with my Cougars-oriented thesis. Now let’s make some bets!

Bets of the Week $$

Last week we went 1-1 and lost 0.1 units of vig.

We won when Caleb Love played up to his potential and Arizona stayed within 10 points of Duke. We lost when Maryland faded in the second half and couldn’t stay close to the Gators.

Even so, since starting the newsletter, bets given out in this section are ahead 11.5 units, at a positive 17% ROI. We’ll update this regularly.

Based on my research, I am making the following bets this week:

• Houston +5.5 @-110 on Fanatics for 1 unit

• Houston +235 on Caesars for 0.2 units

In addition to all the proximity-based reasons shared above, I believe fans of both Florida and Auburn who stick around to watch the late game will disproportionately cheer for Houston (who wants to adopt Duke!), furthering their “quasi” home court advantage.

Next week we’ll talk about the intricacies of golf betting in anticipation of the Masters.

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