Home Court Kings: In conference play, no league is tougher on road foes than Big 12

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All the talk you hear from college basketball coaches about how “tough it is to win on the road” in such-and-such conference can get a little mundane.

We got it, guys. It’s not easy to win away from home. We don’t need to hear you say it 10,000 times, because we know that, deep down, all you’re really trying to do is pump up your own conference so you can receive a better seed or bid in the NCAA Tournament.

It’s classic “coach-speak,” and it gets old.

In (unbiased) college basketball circles, the common thought seems to be that the Big Ten is the most ruthless on road teams. Judging by cumulative ATS stats gathered from the past five seasons, though, that’s not the case. Instead, it’s the Big 12.

And it’s not even close.

If you were to wager solely on Big 12 home teams in conference play since the 2006-07 season, you would have hit at a 55.2-percent rate, well above the 52.38 percent break-even point.

And, to be fair, that’s not even counting departed schools like Colorado and Nebraska, which would have raised the overall win rate to almost 56 percent.

Only two teams — Texas (20-22 ATS) and Baylor (18-23-1 ATS) — have a losing ATS record at home in Big 12 play.

How does all this compare to the other power six conferences?

As you’ll see in the table below, no other conference would have been even close to profitable if you were to bet on the home teams.

The Big Ten is second-best, but it’s barely above .500 at 276-272-12 (.503) and has seven teams with a losing record against the spread at home. With a 30-16 ATS record at home, Purdue raised the Big Ten’s overall stats significantly.

The worst (or most overvalued) conference is definitely the Big East, which has only covered in 47.8 percent of its home games and has four of the 10 worst home teams in the country, including DePaul (15-30-1), Cincinnati (17-29-1), Rutgers (19-27) and Providence (19-27-2).

The Pac-12 doesn’t fare much better than the Big East, posting a cumulative 268-282-12 record (.487), with eight teams at worse than .500 against the spread at home.

So, next time you hear a coach talking about how brutal the road schedule is in his conference, don’t believe him. At least not for gambling purposes.

Unless that coach is from the Big 12.

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Here’s the home ATS breakdown of each conference:

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