Every college basketball fan knows that home-court advantage plays a role in the outcome of every game, but I think people still tend to underestimate how difficult it is to win when a team is outside the friendly confines of their home arena.

Home-court (or field) advantage is important in NCAAF, MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL games as well, but over the past 10 seasons, the advantage has been the strongest in college basketball.

College basketball’s home teams have won 68.3% of their games over the last 10 seasons, and although it’s possible that home-court advantage is becoming less of a factor than it has been in the past, it nevertheless remains a very significant factor in the outcome of games.

Consider this: college basketball analytics expert Ken Pomeroy used his complex rankings system and conducted an analysis of how difficult it is to win on the road. He concluded that for a college basketball team, “beating the 9oth-ranked team on the road is about as difficult as beating the 50th-best team on a neutral floor, which is roughly as difficult as beating the 20th best team on one’s home floor.”

Intuitively, this claim might not seem right, but the more you think about it, the more sense it makes. There’s a reason so many teams have poor road records and that so many big upsets happen when teams enter unfriendly territory.

The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is beginning to jump on board with this school of thought as well. Just as teams should not be punished too harshly for losing certain road games, teams should be well rewarded if they manage to win a good share of difficult road contests.

So is it good for the Irish that they lost 60-62 at Georgia Tech? Of course not. But Georgia Tech had already beaten the likes of Florida State and North Carolina at home as well. And according to KenPom’s analysis, beating Georgia Tech on the road (70th in the nation per KenPom) was about as difficult as beating a top 10-15 team at home: so pretty challenging. The Irish lost to a top 10 KenPom team as recently as last week (Virginia).

The thing that bodes well for the Irish moving forward is that they’ve actually played extremely well on the road this season. They’re 3-2 overall on the road in ACC play, pulled out hard-fought victories at Pittsburgh, Miami, and Virginia Tech, and came up just short at Florida State and Georgia Tech. In comparison, Florida State is 1-3, North Carolina is 3-2, Duke is 1-3, and Louisville is 2-2 on the road in the ACC. Only Virginia has a better ACC road record at 4-1.

Historically, performing well in road games has been a good indicator for performing well in the NCAA Tournament, a trend that isn’t really surprising when one considers the nature of the post-season tourney (no home games, high-stress environments). Just last season, Villanova had the most road wins and best road winning percentage of any team in the nation (10-2), and I’d say the Wildcats had some postseason success.

Life on the road is really tough. Even with two recent road losses, the Irish have shown they can handle tough environments, close out games, and put themselves in great positions to win (even if they occasionally come up short).