Do the Cameron Crazies Give Duke An Advantage?
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by user Timothy Moreland(Bball3345)
This post will contain some mathematical speak, so if you want the short answer to whether or not the Cameron Crazies provide Duke with an advantage on the floor: Yes. If you want a slightly longer answer: Yes, but not a statistically significant one. If you would like an explanation, continue reading.
Specifically, I wanted to know whether there was an evident advantage in the 2005-2006 season, so all the data I used was from last season. First, I created a spreadsheet of all the player's who played against Duke, at Cameron, last season. Then, I gathered all of the box scores from Duke's home games. Using the visiting player's season field goal percentage (minus the game at Duke), I multiplied by the number of field goal attempts by the respective player in their game against Duke. This provided an expected number of shots the player would have made, based on the actual number of shots taken in the contest. Next, I divided the expected field goals by the actual field goal attempts to create an expected field goal percentage. This number indicates what percentage teams should have shot against Duke.
After finding the expected percentage, I compared the actual percentage in home games to this number. Opponents were expected to shoot 45.0% from the field, while they shot 41.2% in reality. As you can see, teams shot worse at Duke than expected. There can be three explanations for this: Duke has a great defense, the Cameron Crazies intimidated shooters, or plain luck. The next step was to run a significance test of the two percentages. As a result, it appears that luck can be used to explain the difference. There is a 15.15% chance for the percentage to end up that low, given the population shot 45%. Therefore, it is not statistically significant.
As a next step, to test the defense theory, I did the same test, but with away games. On the road, teams would be expected to shoot 44.6%, but they actually shot 46.2%. So, on the road, teams faired better against Duke than normal. This takes some credibility from the theory that Duke plays great defense. It seems as if Duke's defense was worse than average on the road; although, this again is not a statistically significant difference.
As well, teams shot roughly 2% worse from the free-throw line against Duke, both home and away.
In conclusion, it appears that Duke does have a slight favor when playing at home, in regards to defending field goals, but not a significant one. This season, the Crazies were moved farther back from the court, so we will have to check at the end of the season and see if the home-court advantage changed.
