Home Advantage in Men’s and Women’s Spanish First and Second Division Water Polo Leagues

Bermejo, Jaime Prieto; Gómez, Miguel–Ángel; Pollard, Richard

doi:10.2478/hukin-2013-0034

Cited by 20 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 33 publications

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“…Starting with the seminal work of Schwartz and Stephen [35] in 1977, the "home advantage phenomenon" has motivated several investigations ever since [36][37][38]. A non-exhaustive list of sports where this phenomenon has been found include soccer [39][40][41][42][43][44][45], baseball [46,47], ice hockey [48,49], roller-hockey [50], basketball [51,52], rugby [53], Australian football [54], water polo [55], volleyball [56], handball [57][58][59], and cricket [60]. This effect has also been observed in individual competitions of tennis [61,62], golf [62], Winter Olympics sports [63], Summer Olympics sports [64], and several other individual sports [65].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

2016

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The idea that the success rate of a team increases when playing home is broadly accepted and documented for a wide variety of sports. Investigations on the so-called “home advantage phenomenon” date back to the 70’s and ever since has attracted the attention of scholars and sport enthusiasts. These studies have been mainly focused on identifying the phenomenon and trying to correlate it with external factors such as crowd noise and referee bias. Much less is known about the effects of home advantage in the “microscopic” dynamics of the game (within the game) or possible team-specific and evolving features of this phenomenon. Here we present a detailed study of these previous features in the National Basketball Association (NBA). By analyzing play-by-play events of more than sixteen thousand games that span thirteen NBA seasons, we have found that home advantage affects the microscopic dynamics of the game by increasing the scoring rates and decreasing the time intervals between scores of teams playing home. We verified that these two features are different among the NBA teams, for instance, the scoring rate of the Cleveland Cavaliers team is increased ≈0.16 points per minute (on average the seasons 2004–05 to 2013–14) when playing home, whereas for the New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets) this rate increases in only ≈0.04 points per minute. We further observed that these microscopic features have evolved over time in a non-trivial manner when analyzing the results team-by-team. However, after averaging over all teams some regularities emerge; in particular, we noticed that the average differences in the scoring rates and in the characteristic times (related to the time intervals between scores) have slightly decreased over time, suggesting a weakening of the phenomenon. This study thus adds evidence of the home advantage phenomenon and contributes to a deeper understanding of this effect over the course of games.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

2016

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“…Water polo is a sport with a growing worldwide interest, particularly for research purposes, with a noticeable increase in the number of recent publications (Prieto et al, 2013). The available research has tried to identify the performance characteristics of the game for both men´s and women´s competitions (Escalante et al, 2011, 2012; Lupo et al, 2010, 2012).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A margin of victory (balanced with a ≤ 3 goals difference and unbalanced with a > 3 goals difference) has been introduced to minimize the effect of the situational nature inherent in other teams (Lupo et al, 2012), as a measurement of match outcomes in performance analysis. On the other hand, performance in a regular water polo season has been analysed by different authors (García et al, 2015; Lupo et al, 2010; Prieto et al, 2013) by examining the offensive performance indicators that discriminate between match scores. The favourable games had averages that were significantly higher for counterattacks and counterattack shots, goals and shots from zone 5 and 6, whereas unfavourable games had significantly higher averages in even attacks and even shots, no goal shots and shots originated from zone 3 and 4 (García et al, 2015).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Performance Assessment in Water Polo Using Compositional Data Analysis

Ordóñez

Iglesias-Pérez

González

2016

Journal of Human Kinetics

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The aim of the present study was to identify groups of offensive performance indicators which best discriminated between a match score (favourable, balanced or unfavourable) in water polo. The sample comprised 88 regular season games (2011-2014) from the Spanish Professional Water Polo League. The offensive performance indicators were clustered in five groups: Attacks in relation to the different playing situations; Shots in relation to the different playing situations; Attacks outcome; Origin of shots; Technical execution of shots. The variables of each group had a constant sum which equalled 100%. The data were compositional data, therefore the variables were changed by means of the additive log-ratio (alr) transformation. Multivariate discriminant analyses to compare the match scores were calculated using the transformed variables. With regard to the percentage of right classification, the results showed the group that discriminated the most between the match scores was “Attacks outcome” (60.4% for the original sample and 52.2% for cross-validation). The performance indicators that discriminated the most between the match scores in games with penalties were goals (structure coefficient (SC) = .761), counterattack shots (SC = .541) and counterattacks (SC = .481). In matches without penalties, goals were the primary discriminating factor (SC = .576). This approach provides a new tool to compare the importance of the offensive performance groups and their effect on the match score discrimination.

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“…Water polo is a sport with a growing worldwide interest, particularly for research purposes, with a noticeable increase in the number of recent publications (Prieto, Gómez, and Pollard, 2013). The available research has tried to identify the performance characteristics of the game for both men´s and women´s competitions (Escalante, Saavedra, Mansilla, and Tella, 2011;Escalante, Saavedra, Tella, Mansilla, García, and Domínguez, 2012;Escalante, Saavedra, Tella, Mansilla, García, and Domínguez., 2013;Lupo, Condello, and Tessitore, 2012a;Lupo, Tessitore, Minganti, and Capranica, 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Keys to Success in High Level Water Polo Teams

Iglesias-Pérez

Ordóñez

González

2016

International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport

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The aim of this study was to identify specific offensive performance indicators that distinguish the top clubs from the others in the Male Honour Division of the Spanish Water Polo League. A total of 88 matches from the 2011-2014 seasons have been analysed. The offensive performance variables were divided into four groups, namely, playing situations, attacks outcome, origin of shots, and technical execution of shots. Univariate analyses (ANOVA, Kruskal-Wallis and generalised linear model (GLM) tests) were conducted to identify differences in the offensive variables between "strong", "medium" or "weak" teams' performances. A multinomial logistic regression was carried out to determine the variables that best distinguish the team level. The offensive variables that best classified the team level (61.9% of correct classification rate) were counterattack shots (p<0.010), goals (p<0.011), no goal shots (p<0.013), drive shots (p<0.020), penalties (p<0.000), and shots originated from zones close to goal (zone 5 (p<0.010) and 6 (p<0.000)). As a conclusion, this paper presents values of reference for the offensive variables that best distinguish between the strong, medium and weak teams' performances. This information can help coaches to evaluate their teams and to design training sessions aimed at improving their weakest skills.

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Home Advantage in Men’s and Women’s Spanish First and Second Division Water Polo Leagues

Cited by 20 publications

References 33 publications

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

The Advantage of Playing Home in NBA: Microscopic, Team-Specific and Evolving Features

Performance Assessment in Water Polo Using Compositional Data Analysis

Keys to Success in High Level Water Polo Teams

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