We recently examined the relative home strength of each ACC men’s power, and what that foretold about the competitive fates of visitors and hosts this season. What we haven’t done in a long while is examine how league programs fare on the road, where innate squad strengths are heavily relied upon to achieve success.
Of course coaches will insist the venue really doesn’t matter. You can probably anticipate what they’ll say: ‘We’re not playing the crowd, we’re playing the team in the other uniforms.’
Still, advantages do accrue to most any home team. Winning on the road is a weighed challenge, for reasons ranging from tradition to familiarity with quirks of playing surface and shooting background to the personal comfort levels of members of both teams.