Losing on the Road Means Nothing in College Basketball

Maybe it's because we're only two weeks removed from college football, a sport in which champions go undefeated more often than not, but it seems as if we are overreacting to quality teams losing tough conference road games.

Ohio State loses at Illinois (behind the best performance of the year out of Brandon Paul) and all of a sudden they aren't national title contenders? Baylor gets blown out at Kansas and everyone is re-evaluating the Bears' worth. UNC loses at FSU (albeit in a landslide) and their national title hopes are gone. It's preposterous.

Losing on the road means nothing in college basketball because a) everyone does it, b) it's difficult to win on the road and c) after the regular season, no one plays a true road game!

The last fact may be the most pertinent going forward. Other than the smaller conferences which play conference tourneys at a school site, programs will play all neutral site games from March on.

Play the game on a neutral floor and it's an advantage for neither team. Play it on a neutral and odds are that Ohio State beats Illinois, Indiana beats Nebraska, Kentucky blows out Tennessee, the Kansas vs. Baylor game is closer, and despite losing by 33, UNC beats FSU more often than not.

It isn't as if we've been down this road before. We have to remember that every national champion in the past 35 years has lost at least one game. As you would expect, it's more likely they will lose on the road.

Let's take a look at the past nine national champions and their "loss distribution."

2011: Connecticut: 5 Road Losses, 4 Home Losses

2010: Duke: 5 Road Losses, 0 Home Losses

2009: UNC: 2 Road Losses, 1 Home Loss, 1 Neutral Loss

2008: Kansas: 3 Road Losses, 0 Home Losses

2007: Florida: 4 Road Losses, 0 Home Losses, 1 Neutral Loss

2006: Florida: 4 Road Losses, 2 Home Losses

2005: UNC: 3 Road Losses, 0 Home Losses, 1 Neutral Loss

2004: Connecticut: 4 Road Losses, 1 Home Loss, 1 Neutral Loss (to GT, eventual runner-up)

2003: Syracuse: 3 Road Losses, 0 Home Losses, 2 Neutral Losses

As you can see, the past nine champions have averaged 3.67 road losses per year. Therefore, contenders for the championship this year such as Ohio State, Kentucky, Syracuse, Kansas, UNC and Baylor are all okay as none of them have more than three road losses yet.

What may be a more interesting stat to follow is eventual champions' home and neutral losses.

The average amount of home losses per season from the previous nine champions is one. One! And that number is inflated because UConn had five last season. If we take out UConn and study just the eight before that, the champions average 0.5 home losses per season.

What does that mean? It means if you lose once at home, you're going to buck a trend if you end up winning the national championship.

Who is still undefeated at home? Too many to list. But you can rest assured that Ohio State, Kentucky, Syracuse, Kansas, UNC, Baylor, Duke, Michigan State, Mizzou and Baylor are all still undefeated at home.

Even if we include neutral losses, we see that the last nine champs average 1.56 home and neutral losses per season (again inflated because of UConn last season).

Again: Ohio State, Duke, UNC, Syracuse, Kentucky, Baylor and Mizzou have combined for...zero home and neutral losses (I'm counting UNC's loss to UNLV as a road loss even though it wasn't at Thomas & Mack). Kansas and Michigan State each have two neutral losses.

Long story short: Don't be surprised when a contender goes down on the road. We shouldn't have been surprised when Indiana lost to Nebraska (they were three point favorites, after all) or when Kentucky barely won against Arkansas.

When one of these teams loses at home, then it may be cause for concern.