I think the short answer is yes, it is. However, is it as much of a home court advantage as other schools venues? That is a trickier question but not necessarily for the reasons one might think. To determine which school has the best homecourt advantage, I too all of the home and home games over the last 6 seasons and calculated the difference in the scoring margin at home versus on the road for all Div1 schools. As you would expect, 351 of the 355 schools who have competed in Div1 over the last 6 seasons had a better averaging scoring margin at home versus on the road. Interestingly, Vanderbilt was dead last, averaging a 0.3 point better scoring margin on the road. Oregon has the best differential averaging 7.04 points better scoring margin on the road than at home. KU, in the 54 home and home games over the last 6 seasons, (all conference games obviously) had a 3.95 better scoring margin at home than on the road. That puts them 103rd out of 355 teams. So clearly, if you use net scoring margin at home versus on the road the Allen Fieldhouse advantage is middling to slightly above average. But does that really tell the story.
There could be a number of reasons why a home court advantage does not calculate as highly as it should. Here are a few possible reasons.
1. Visiting teams get far more "pumped up" when they play in certain venues (like AFH)
2. Some teams are more consistent and naturally do not fluctuate from home to road as much as others
The methodology I used is not a direct measure of home court advantage but rather a differential between home and road. So consistent teams may have a very significant advantage at home but it does not show up as robustly in a differential analysis.
I'm going with Allen fieldhouse being a significant home court advantage. Over the last 6 season, KU has won 94.0% of their home games. That is 2nd only to South Dakota St at 94.4%. And when you consider that KU has had the toughest home court SOS over that period, I think it bodes well for Allen Fieldhouse being a good home court advantage. Of course, the best advantage of all is the coaches and players who wear the Jayhawk crimson and blue.
