The interconference battle: the final results

Now that the regular season is completed, we can take a comprehensive look at how teams fared when playing out of conference. The final results have changed a bit since we last looked at this a few weeks ago, but the overall conclusions really stayed much the same.

Unsurprisingly, San Antonio came out on top, and were almost perfect except for one road loss (0-1 to Indy Eleven). Both the Legion and Rio Grande Valley Toros lost their perfect road performances in the final weeks of the season, so no one was perfect on the road. Amazingly, only San Antonio was perfect at home. Results did favor home teams, though, albeit not by much: league-wide home PPG was 1.463 compared with road PPG of 1.356. Just 23 points more were earned at home, less than 1 per team.

The conferences did even out a little as the season ended, with 6 Western teams in the top ten and 4 Eastern teams. All but one of the top ten are playoff teams, the outlier being rookies Monterey Bay, who dd have a somewhat favorable schedule (other than Louisville City and Tampa Bay, that is). The 4 Eastern teams are the 4 home playoff teams, so no shocker there.

7 of the bottom ten teams were from the East. Of those, 3 were the Eastern MLS 2 teams. The Miami FC can probably be forgiven poor results given the additional travel their home base implies. LA Galaxy II were also in the bottom ten, so all true MLS 2 teams were in that group. Las Vegas, not technically an MLS 2 team barely escaped, coming in 15th overall. The big surprise in the bottom rank would be the Pittsburgh Riverhounds, who won just 2 of their 8 games, both at home.

Overall, the West fared better both at home and on the road than the East, with home PPG of 1.750 and road PPG of 1.417. The East managed just 1.233 and 1.117. Taking the MLS 2 teams out, the West did much worse at home (1.469) and slightly worse away (1.313). The East did slightly better on both fronts, with 1.300 PPG both home and away. The West still had the edge, though, but not by a wide margin.

These results are probably in line with what everyone expected. This season the West was, generally speaking, stronger than the East, and is also more accustomed to long-distance travel. However, that could change somewhat in the East’s favor next season as the league will look very different without the MLS 2 teams, a new expansion team (hopefully) and possible conference realignment.