Heading into Saturday’s game against Georgetown, West Virginia had beaten its opponents by an average of 30 points in Morgantown. The Hoyas looked ready to be the Mountaineers’ latest victim, trailing for most of the second half. But a Jessie Sapp 3-pointer with six seconds left and a controversial blocked shot by Patrick Ewing Jr. gave Georgetown a huge road win — a rarity in the Big East.

Truth be told, road wins are rare on every campus. No major American sport has a bigger home court advantage than college basketball. A three-year study of the sport from 1998 to 2001 by Duke university sociologist Thomas Giedgowd showed the gap between teams’ road and home winning percentage ranging from 26% to higher than 29%. No wonder. Teams travel to hostile environments, where they must contend with packed houses, student sections breathing down their necks, referees often swayed by the crowd, and players fired up by their surroundings.

Staring down those long odds and pulling out a big road win is one of the best ways for a college basketball team to prove its abilities. With road wins at a premium, stealing games away from home gives a team a big leg up in its conference standings. It also offers a fine litmus test for a team’s NCAA tournament chances. With every game in the tournament away from home, teams must find their own motivation and energy, without the benefit of coeds wearing lucha libre masks and body paint.

Southern California coach Tim Floyd has his own quick and dirty system for gauging teams’ ability to win on the road. Floyd awards one point to a team when it wins on the road and subtracts one point when a team loses at home. By season’s end, teams’ won-lost records tend to sync up with this system. During the course of the season, however, a plus-minus calculus offers an interesting snapshot of in-conference results. After an 0–3 start in the Pac-10, the Trojans have started winning — and faring well according to their coach’s system. USC has reeled off four wins in a row, with three of those wins coming on the road. The marquee win came when the Trojans waltzed into Pauley Pavilion January 19 and knocked off UCLA. But Saturday’s overtime victory at Oregon was nearly as impressive. The Trojans showed they could win in multiple ways, starting with a lockdown defensive performance that put them up 25–20 at halftime. USC then blew a 12-point lead in the final 5:43 of regulation, giving up a buzzer-beater layup to send the game to overtime. The team responded by going 5-for-5 from beyond the arc in overtime, on their way to a 95–86 win. By getting contributions from multiple players, surviving a potentially deflating blown lead and toppling Oregon at the always rowdy McArthur Court, the Trojans showed they can be contenders, even in the Pac-10, the toughest conference in the country this season. According to Floyd’s plus-minus system, USC’s +2 rating puts the team just one notch below UCLA and Washington State in conference play, despite a record that places the Trojans in the middle of the pack.

Georgetown and USC weren’t the only prominent teams to snag big road wins over the weekend. Three other Big East clubs beat top-25 opponents on the road. Notre Dame ran its Big East record to 4–2 after its 90–80 win over no. 18 Villanova. Rutgers pulled out a shocker, beating no. 13 Pitt 77–64 at the Petersen Events Center, usually a house of horrors for visitors. Barring a collapse, Notre Dame looks like a good bet to grab a decent seed in the NCAA Tournament, while Rutgers would need a miracle to get there.

Then there’s Connecticut’s amazing performance at Indiana Saturday. Just minutes before UConn boarded the bus for the game, Huskies coach Jim Calhoun suspended guards Jerome Dyson and Doug Wiggins for unspecified reasons. The move threatened to blow up in Connecticut’s face. The team was about to play the no. 7 team in the nation, facing one of the most fervent home crowds anywhere. The loss of two of the team’s top three guards figured to leave the Huskies too thin to handle a loaded Indiana team and the UConn players too deflated to have a chance. Instead, Connecticut took down Indiana 68–63. Calhoun hasn’t decided if Dyson and Wiggins will play this week against two tough opponents in Louisville and Pitt. Still, the Huskies’ statement win announced the team as a viable contender.

Elsewhere, Washington State stormed back late to nip Arizona State 56–55, prompting a hostile Wells Fargo Arena crowd to reportedly pelt several Cougars’ players with debris at game’s end. Xavier got its own big road victory yesterday, smacking UMass 77–65 in Amherst to take the lead in the Atlantic-10 standings.

Duke capped off the weekend of big road wins, coming from behind to beat Maryland 93–84. The Blue Devils have proven time and again that they can win in tough environments this season, making them a legitimate Final Four threat.

But two teams that started the season on long unbeaten streaks suffered disappointing road losses. Florida jumped out to an unthinkable 34–6 lead on Vanderbilt, then cruised to an 86–64 win over the no. 14 Commodores. After starting the year 16–0, Vandy has lost three of its past four games and is 0–3 on the road in SEC play. Freshman big man A.J. Ogilvy, an early-season darling, has withered during those three games, getting outplayed by Wayne Chism of Tennessee, Patrick Patterson of Kentucky, and Marreese Speights of Florida — with several blown layups and botched defensive assignments yesterday against the Gators. Meanwhile, Clemson had Miami on the ropes Sunday, before Jack McClinton’s three straight 3-pointers put the Hurricanes ahead for good, on their way to a 75–72 home win. Clemson started the year 10–0, feasting on early-season cupcakes for the second straight season. But the Tigers have gone cold against tougher competition, with a 0–2 record in ACC road games to start conference play. until Vandy and Clemson prove they can win on the road, it’s tough to picture them going very far in March.

Mr. Keri (jonahkeri@gmail.com) is a writer for ESPN.com’s Page 2.