I’ve been meaning to do a study on which ACC arena gives the biggest home court advantage. And I finally got around to it. Before I reveal any data – what is your guess?
It’s not obvious how to measure home court advantage. Kenpom has a way of doing it, but I decided to create my own, based on the data available to me. It’s pretty simple. For each team/arena, I calculated the difference between the team’s home winning percentage and their road winning percentage in regular season conference games only. I looked at conference games only to eliminate any noise that might be introduced by differences in non-conference strength of schedule.
For instance, let’s take Pitt. Since they’ve been a member of the ACC, through 2023, they’ve won 46.2% of their ACC games at Petersen Events Center and 26.4% on the road. So that’s a home court advantage of 19.8%.
I did this same calculation for each team/home arena, leaving out small sample sizes such as Wake Forest playing the occasional home game at Greensboro Coliseum or Georgia Tech playing at the Omni.
Here are the results, ordered from biggest home court advantage to smallest. If you guessed Littlejohn, you’re right:
| Team | Arena | Years | Home | Road | Home Adv |
| Clemson | Littlejohn Coliseum | 1969-present | 58.5% | 22.9% | 35.6% |
| Maryland | Comcast/ Xfinity | 2003-2014 | 68.4% | 34.7% | 33.7% |
| Wake Forest | Lawrence Joel | 1990-present | 61.1% | 28.2% | 32.9% |
| Virginia | University Hall | 1966-2006 | 61.4% | 29.0% | 32.4% |
| Georgia Tech | McCamish/Alexander | 1981-present | 55.3% | 26.1% | 29.2% |
| Clemson | Clemson Field House | 1954-1968 | 45.6% | 18.3% | 27.3% |
| Virginia | Memorial Gym | 1954-1965 | 38.7% | 11.5% | 27.2% |
| Florida State | Tucker/ Leon Co. | all | 62.3% | 35.3% | 27.0% |
| Wake Forest | Winston-Salem Memorial | 1957-1989 | 55.7% | 30.0% | 25.7% |
| Maryland | Cole Field House | 1954-2002 | 63.3% | 37.7% | 25.6% |
| Virginia Tech | Cassell Coliseum | all | 57.3% | 31.9% | 25.4% |
| Duke | Cameron Indoor | all | 79.3% | 54.7% | 24.6% |
| Miami (FL) | BankUnited/Watsco | all | 61.1% | 36.7% | 24.4% |
| NC State | Reynolds Coliseum | 1954-1999 | 61.9% | 37.5% | 24.4% |
| North Carolina | Carmichael | 1966-1986 | 87.6% | 63.7% | 23.9% |
| Notre Dame | Joyce Center | all | 59.8% | 36.2% | 23.6% |
| Louisville | KFC Yum Center | all | 64.2% | 41.5% | 22.7% |
| South Carolina | Carolina Fieldhouse | 1954-1968 | 43.7% | 21.1% | 22.6% |
| Virginia | JPJ Arena | 2007-present | 76.5% | 54.7% | 21.8% |
| Boston College | Conte Forum | all | 44.9% | 23.2% | 21.7% |
| North Carolina | Smith Center | 1986-present | 78.1% | 57.6% | 20.5% |
| Pittsburgh | Petersen | all | 46.2% | 26.4% | 19.8% |
| North Carolina | Woollen Gym | 1954-1965 | 78.9% | 59.2% | 19.7% |
| Syracuse | Carrier Dome/JMA | all | 63.0% | 43.5% | 19.5% |
| NC State | PNC/RBC | 2000-present | 54.6% | 35.4% | 19.2% |
| Wake Forest | Gore Gym | 1954-1956 | 75.0% | 59.1% | 15.9% |
| South Carolina | Carolina Coliseum | 1969-1970 | 92.3% | 84.6% | 7.7% |
NC State fans won’t be surprised to learn that PNC has the smallest advantage of any arena, excepting Gore Gym and Carolina Coliseum which have only a few years of data.
I think the biggest surprise to me is the size of the home court advantage overall. Would you have guessed that Clemson has won a higher percentage of their home games at Littlejohn than Carolina has won of their road games since the Dean Dome opened in 1986? I would not have.
Another way to say that is that on average, you’d have a better chance against Carolina at home than against Clemson at Littlejohn. Obviously that varies wildly from year to year, but as a general result, I find that surprising.
The other number that pops is Carolina’s 87.6% winning percentage at Carmichael.