It was a banner weekend for underdogs, as the away teams kicked off the 2011 Playoffs with 3 wins, including victories by the Western Conference #8 and #7 seeds. How do the road teams' performances in this set of opening-round game 1s compare to other years since the playoffs expanded in 1984?

Let's take a look (all numbers from the perspective of the average road team in Game 1 of the 1st round):

(Click column headers to sort by each category.)

In terms of wins, the road teams in 2003 & 2009 actually did this year one better, going 4-4 to start round 1. However, no set of opening-round game 1s can match the 2011 road teams' average margin of victory, thanks to a 10-point Hawks win & a 9-point Hornets win (plus the fact that every other underdog at least kept the game close).

The best road performance relative to expectations, though, had to have come in 1991:

In each game, you can calculate expected margin of victory by taking the road team's simple rating, subtracting the home team's rating, and subtracting the league-average home court advantage term. With a 39-point Phoenix win over Utah to offset Chicago's 41-point whipping of the Knicks, and a mix of wins/closer-than-expected losses, 1991 narrowly edges 2011 as the year where underdogs exceeded expectations the most in Game 1 of Round 1.

For those curious, here's the same chart for 2011:

This entry was posted on Monday, April 18th, 2011 at 10:40 am and is filed under Analysis, History, Playoffs, SRS, Statgeekery, Trivia. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.