Skip to main content

Big Ten Basketball Projections for 02/21/2019

It wasn't pretty last night, but the key thing is that MSU got the W and didn't completely crap the bed in the Big 10 race. On Tuesday night, Purdue managed to win at Indiana, and as such they have drawn near even with MSU. The updated win matrix (as always derived from Kenpom efficiency data) is shown below:

[​IMG]

As the table shows, MSU now holds only a very slight lead over the Boilers in expected wins, and MSU actually has one less game left to play. So, if Purdue can win at Nebraska this weekend, they will almost certainly pass MSU. Also, it is notable that for NCAA tournament purposes, it looks to me like it is going to be 8 teams only. The Top 6 look very safe right now and I would guess that Ohio State and Minnesota are going to sneak in as well. Illinois is making an interesting late charge, but their non-conference performance was just miserable, so they are much more behind they 8-ball on that one.

As for the Top of the Big Ten, the expected win trends are shown below:

[​IMG]

As for the odds to win or tie for the conference title, here are the updated odds:

[​IMG]

So, both MSU and Purdue have over a 50% chance to win or share the title, while Michigan's odds are much lower (still having road games at Maryland and MSU will do that to you). As for the other specific odds:

Odds of a solo MSU Title: 32%
Odds of a Purdue / MSU tie: 27%
Odds of a Purdue solo Title: 21%
Odds of a Purdue / Michigan tie: 14%
Odds of an MSU / UofM tie: 12%
Odds of a solo UofM tie: 9%
Odds of a 3-way tie: 6%

Once again, this does not explicitly take into account the loss of Nick Ward. So, it is reasonable to guess that MSU's actual odds are a bit lower.

For completeness, here are the trends for the rest of the Big Ten:

[​IMG]
[​IMG]

As for other comments, I will again be looking closely at the line for the upcoming Michigan game. Kenpom has the game as MSU +2, and my math suggests that it is closer to +1.5. I would expect the real line will be closer to +4 or +5, but this will again give us an indicator of the impact of losing Ward. Incidentally, the difference between +1.5 and +5 is the difference in having a ~45% chance of winning and a ~30% chance of winning, historically. That is pretty significant.

That said, both Michigan and Purdue have road games (@ Minnesota and @ Nebraska) before MSU travels to Ann Arbor. No matter how these games shake out, the landscape will look much, much different by Monday morning. In the worst case scenario (Purdue and Michigan win all games), Purdue becomes the prohibitive favorite (75%) and MSU's odds would drop to around 35%. However, in the best case (Purdue goes down in Lincoln, and Michigan losses both), MSU odds would rise to over 95%, which Michigan would essentially be toast (<3%). Cross your fingers, Spartan fans!

Enjoy!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dr. Green and White Helps You Fill Out Your Bracket (2024 Edition)

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I love the bracket. I love the underdogs. I love One Shining Moment. I even love the CBS theme music. As a kid I filled out hand-drawn brackets and scoured the morning newspaper for results of late night games. As I got older, I started tracking scores using a increasing complex set of spreadsheets. Over time, as my analysis became more sophisticated, I began to notice certain patterns to the Madness I have found that I can use modern analytics and computational tools to gain a better understanding of the tournament itself and perhaps even extract some hints as to how the tournament might play out. Last year, I used this analysis to correctly predict that No. 4 seed UConn win the National Title in addition to other notable upsets. There is no foolproof way to dominate your office pool, but it is possible to spot upsets that are more likely than others and teams that are likely to go on a run or flame out early.
Post a Comment
Read more

The Case for Optimism

In my experience there are two kinds of Michigan State fans. First, there are the pessimists. These are the members of the Spartan fan base who always expect the worst. Any amount of success for the Green and White is viewed to be a temporary spat of good luck. Even in the years when Dantonio was winning the Rose Bowl and Izzo was going to the Final Four, dark times were always just around the bend. Then, there are the eternal optimists. This part of the Spartan fan base always bets on the "over." These fans expect to go to, and win, and bowl games every year. They expect that the Spartans can win or least be competitive in every game on the schedule. The optimists believe that Michigan State can be the best Big Ten athletic department in the state. When it comes to the 2023 Michigan State football team, the pessimists are having a field day. A major scandal, a fired head coach, a rash of decommitments, and a four-game losing streak will do that. Less than 24 months after hoi
Post a Comment
Read more

2023 Final Playoff and New Year's Six Predictions

The conference championships have all been played and, in all honesty, last night's results were the absolute worst-case scenario for the Selection Committee. Michigan and Washington will almost certainly be given the No. 1 and No. 2 seed and be placed in the Sugar Bowl and the Rose Bowl respectively. But there are four other teams with a reasonable claim on the last two spots and I have no idea what the committee is going to do. Florida State is undefeated, but the Seminoles played the weakest schedule of the four candidates and their star quarterbac (Jordan Travis) suffered a season ending injury in the second-to-last game of the regular season. Florida State is outside of the Top 10 in both the FPI and in my power rankings. I also the Seminoles ranked No. 5 in my strength of record metric, behind two of the other three candidates. Georgia is the defending national champions and were previously ranked No. 1 coming into the week. But after losing to Alabama in the SEC Title game,
Post a Comment
Read more