Nineteen times now, the visiting team has lost in the NBA’s conference semifinals.

Only Detroit has won on the road (a 90-89 win at Orlando), and, as such, is the only team to have closed out its series.

For New Orleans, that doesn’t bode very well, not when Game 6 comes against San Antonio on the road tonight at 8 p.m.

Photo by Matt Slocum / The Associated Press

San Antonio guard Tony Parker, left, drives to the basket past Hornets guard Chris Paul during the first quarter in Game 4. The Hornets will try to close out the series with a win in San Antonio tonight.

Not when two of the team’s most important players aren’t playing at 100 percent – forward David West will play with a strained back while center Tyson Chandler will play with a bruised foot.

Not when, in the previous two tries to win in San Antonio, the Hornets lost by 11 and 20, respectively, in Games 3 and 4.

“I said before the series started that most of the games were going to be close, highly-contested games and really, none of them have been close,” New Orleans head coach Byron Scott said. “I don’t know what it is about the home-court advantage that has really turned out to be just that in the playoffs.”

New Orleans lost six straight games in San Antonio heading into the 2007-08 season. But in the Hornets’ first try at the AT&T Center this season, that changed. New Orleans roasted the Spurs, handing them one of their worst home losses of the season, a 102-78 setback on Jan. 26.

But since then, New Orleans has now lost three straight there, falling by nine in February before losing 110-99 and 100-80 in the third and fourth games of the current series. Game 7 would be Monday night in New Orleans.

Nevertheless, the Hornets aren’t alone in their road woes.

The Boston Celtics, who had the NBA’s best record during the regular season, are 0-5 on the road this postseason. The Los Angeles Lakers, the No. 1 seed in the West, are 0-2 at Utah in the semifinals. San Antonio, the defending champion, hasn’t even been close against New Orleans at the Arena, losing by a combined 59 points.

In New Orleans’ case, the team said it can’t think about its most recent performances in San Antonio. Tonight’s a new night.

“We can take the tape and throw it away and not look at it,” Scott said. “It wasn’t very good.”

Added Chris Paul, “They’re over and done with. It’s another game. You look back at those, we see what we did wrong, what we did right. Nothing that we did in the other games can help us with this one.”

That could include getting to the foul line. Sixty percent of the time the team that finishes with more free throws has picked up the win in the conference semifinals. And only seven times in 20 games has the visiting team been granted more foul shots.

Only five times has the difference in free throws awarded been 12 or more, and only one time has that happened in the New Orleans-San Antonio series. The Hornets got to the foul line 33 times to San Antonio’s 18 in Game 6, a 101-79 New Orleans win.

The only series where the visiting team could have a true beef is the other Western Conference semifinal. Three times Utah’s series against Los Angeles, the home team has had at least a 14-free throw advantage on the visiting team.

In the New Orleans-San Antonio series, the teams both have two games in which they've recorded more free throws. In Game 3, both teams shot 21 free throws.

That means New Orleans, which has preached aggression throughout the offseason, will have to play with high intensity tonight. That has been a problem for the Hornets away from the New Orleans Arena.

“That’s something we’ll talk about all day and before the game,” Paul said. “When you make shots and stuff like that, it helps a lot. But we’ve just got to find some way, some how.”