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Tom Izzo, by the numbers

It has been over a month since Tom Izzo and the Michigan State Spartans were eliminated from the NCAA Tournament by the UConn Huskies in the Sweet 16. It will also be approximately six months before the next year's team takes to the court again.  With the commitment of Anton Bonke on April 22 and the departure of guard Divine Ugochukwu via the transfer portal, it will likely be a quiet summer in East Lansing on the basketball front. But one thing that Spartan fans can count on is that one of the best coaches in the history of the game will once again be patrolling the sidelines next season in the Breslin center. As summer beckons, it is a good time to look back and reflect on the amazing career, so far, of Tom Izzo. Big Ten Dominance Tom Izzo is currently the winningest coach in the history of the Big Ten conference. He will likely hold onto this title for the foreseeable future. As of the end of the 2026 season, he currently holds the record for both total wins at a Big Ten s...
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Michigan State versus UConn in the Sweet 16, by the numbers

On Friday evening in our nation's capital, two storied programs will meet in the Sweet 16 for the right to advance to the Regional Final on Sunday. The No. 3-seeded Michigan State Spartans will tangle with the No. 2-seeded UConn Huskies. Sunday will mark the third all-time NCAA Tournament meeting between the Spartans and Huskies. In 2009, Tom Izzo and company defeated UConn in the national semifinal game at Ford Field. It was the only loss that UConn coaching legend Jim Calhoun ever suffered in his three trips to the Final Four. Five years later, UConn exacted revenge on Michigan State as the No. 7-seeded Huskies overcame a nine-point second-half deficit to upset the Spartans in the 2014 Regional Final. A little over a week later, UConn hosted the National Championship trophy. UConn is currently a narrow 1.5-point favorite against MSU, which is just barely below the historical average of a two-point spread in No. 2 versus No. 3 seed games in the NCAA Tournament. Based on this sprea...
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What are the odds of picking a perfect NCAA Tournament bracket?

As the college basketball fans awaits best four days of the year, I am sure that there are some people out there that are struggling to finalize their office pool bracket. As they stress about which No. 12 seed team to select in an first round upset or which dark horse team to advance to the Final Four, it is natural to have one of two related thoughts: "What if this winds up being exactly how the tournament actually plays out?" or "What are the odds to correctly pick the results of the entire tournament?"   This is a question that a lot of people have tried to answer over the years, myself included. As we will see, this is actually a much more complex question than it might appear on the surface. It is also a question that a lot of smart people don't get right. But I think that I have found the answer. There is one extremely simple way to think about this problem.  If you assume a person is simply randomly guessing on the winner of each game, the odds are very...
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Dr. Green and White Helps You Fill Out Your Bracket (2026 Edition)

In my opinion, the middle of March is the absolute best time of the year. Over the past two weeks we have witnessed the exciting conclusion of several regular season conference races, followed by 31 conference tournaments. This past weekend, the full 68-team NCAA Tournament bracket was released. Sports fanatics are on the brink of Madness. Who will play the role of Cinderella in the story of the 2026 tournament? Will any survive to reach the second weekend? Which four teams will advance to Indianapolis on that first weekend in April? Which lucky team will end up cutting down the nets?  Over the years I have developed a set of analytics and computational tools to gain a better understanding of the mathematical underpinning of the NCAA Basketball Tournament. My methodology has a solid track record of correctly identifying upsets and sometimes doing more than that. In 2023, I used data to correctly predict that No. 4 seed UConn would win the National Title. There is no foolproof way t...
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