Watching college hoops across the country this season, I have started using home court advantage as my reference point for everything that is happening. In close match-ups, I would argue that home teams have been overwhelmingly dominant. In fact, some games this year that traditionally have been close finishes have actually resulted in blowouts: UNC at Fla St, GU at St. Mary's, etc. Therefore, I put even more importance on strong road performances. By this standard, I think Cincinnati is playing some of the best basketball in the nation right now: they have beaten Gtown and UConn at their places, with another road test at WVU today.

Following this theme, I think GU's signature win this year is Xavier. (I think they were still in a post-fight funk, but we went over there and got it done.) IMO, that's pretty much it, although if we can avoid road hiccups to the second tier WCC competitors, that will be significant. Obviously the next big date is Feb 2 at BYU. I think we will enter that game tied for first and we will get our 2nd big road win that night. BYU has Virginia Tech away next week before their meeting with St. Mary's next Sat at home. I think BYU will hold serve at home versus SMU, but will be drained win or lose for another critical game with us the following week. St. Mary's has 4 of their next 5 games on the road, including the Feb 9 date with GU. There are a couple trap games in there for them besides BYU and us.

I think the schedule is set up for us, as it has been all year. Obvious pluses to this: best record ever at this point and a serious opportunity to still get the top seed in our tournament. Negatives: are we being challenged to play great basketball?, are we going to peak at the right time?

What do you think about these possible trends? My theory for the reason why is that college hoops gets more and more balanced every year and road teams are not good enough to overcome the home court momentum.