You'll be overloaded with expert opinions on filling out your brackets over the next three days. Pick and choose at your own peril, everyone's got their opinions and things they look for, but at the end of the day few people have a foolproof system for winning you the praise of your friends and officemates. Still, everyone's looking for an edge and, in that spirit, I point you toward Vegas Watch. They've uncovered a pretty significant trend when it comes to home/road splits and what they tell you about a team's chances at success in the tournament. If you're really into the math behind the findings, you should click there or Teamrankings.com, but I'll summarize the findings.
They took the top six seeds from 1999-2006 and found the ones with the biggest split between their home and road power ratings. The results aren't good for teams who did their best work at home. They won 0.5 fewer games than expected while road warriors won 0.24 more games than projected. They also found that five teams since '99 were seeded 1-6 and finished in the top 20 at home and below 50 on the road. None of those teams made it past the second round.
What does that mean for this season?
It doesn't look good for Vanderbilt. The Commodores are 11th best at home but rank just 68th (behind first-round foe Siena) on the road. The fifth seed in the South, Michigan State, could also be a risky selection. They are fifth at the Breslin Center but tumble to 61st when they're away from home. That, mixed with red-hot Temple, could be bad for Tom Izzo.
The other way, two Pac-10 teams jump out. Washington State is 6th on the road and 58th at home and USC has a 10/52 split. Drake, a team with some doubters, has a 13/39 spread. It's less dramatic but still might make you think twice about writing them off as a product of a weaker-than-usual MVC.
