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2019 Week 6 Recap: Little Things

Breathe In, Breath Out, Spartan fans. OSU is, essentially, exactly who we thought that they were. They are a very good football team (possible the best in the country) and MSU needed to bring its A-game and likely get a little bit of luck in order to hang with them. MSU did not bring its A-game (more like a B-) and MSU really didn’t get much luck. As a result, MSU is now the longest of long shots to win the East and make it back to Indy this year.
This is not a surprise. The spread was OSU -20. My algorithm said OSU would win by 27, even if MSU was a Top 15 team. By that measure, MSU actually had an above average performance, relative to their performances thus far this year. At the end of the 1st quarter, MSU had won more snaps than it had lost. 
Furthermore, if MSU doesn't blow the pitch on the speed option, Lewerke doesn't over-throw White on the FG drive, and the refs call the most obvious pass interference call in the history of college football at the 5 yard line on MSU's first drive of the 3rd quarter, MSU could have easily been down only 24-21 with the ball late in the 3rd quarter.  Sure, maybe OSU would had hit the accelerator and won by 20+ points anyway.  But, OSU has not faced that kind of game pressure all year, and MSU would have still been able to use its full play book.  The defense would also have had one fewer fuel-consuming-quick-change situation to deal with in the first half.  MSU could have been right there.
But, all that plus a quarter will buy you a gumball on the way out of Meijer. MSU needs to do all the Little Things right if they wanted to have a chance to win, and unfortunately, It's the Little Things That Kill and that's exactly what is Tearing At our collective Brains Again after this weekend.  MSU is still committing stupid penalties, having assignment or gap errors, dropping passes, and missing easy throws (while making several really difficult ones...)  Those things need to get cleaned up.. in a HURRY if MSU is going to reach its full potential.
It is obviously frustrating to lose, especially when you can point to so many plays where MSU could of / should of executed better and stayed in the game a little longer. However, did anyone actually think that MSU was going to go 11-1, win the Big Ten and make the playoffs? Sure, we can all dream about that, but the stars just weren't aligned.  From that respect, this loss really should be a Little Thing. MSU actually played pretty well, in many respects. They can and should build on that.
Unfortunately, it's the next two games that are not so little. In my season preview this year, my estimation was that MSU had a 50-50 shot to win all 8 of our easiest 8 games.  MSU obviously dropped one and needs to avoid another brain-fart in the remaining three contests against Illinois, Maryland, and Rutgers.  MSU can equal its win total from last year just by winning those three games.
Whether MSU's season is ultimately judged as a success or a failure will largely hinge on the results of the remaining games at Wisconsin, vs. Penn State, and at Michigan.  I have seen enough to lead me to believe that MSU can absolutely win all three of those games.  However, if they cannot tighten some of those Little Things up, 7-5 is a real possibility.  That would be terribly disappointing.
Don't Let These Days Go By, MSU.  For the last decade or so, we have honestly been living somewhere adjacent to Cloud 9 (minus an isolated down year here and there).  I personally Don't Wanna Come Back Down from This Cloud just yet. I personally think that this team has some special moments left in them.  Next week would be a great time to see them.
Big Ten Metrics Update
So, where does that leave MSU for the rest of the year? Here are my updated odds for the Big Ten race(s) after Week 6:

Are here are the updated expected win totals:

And here are the trends for conference win totals, for the Big Ten East and West


As the data above shows, MSU’s chances to win the Big Ten East are... slim. I estimate them to be about 1 in 1,100 right now. But, this doesn’t mean that MSU is a bad team or is bound to finish 6-6. Actually, MSU actually went up in my power rankings this week and is somehow ranked #10 in the country. If you think that is crazy, the FPI has MSU at #15, while MSU is #18 in the S&P+, and both of those systems take recruiting rankings and/or preseason rankings into account. My rankings are not an outlier.
As for expected wins, MSU is holding steady at 8.08 wins (6.08 conference wins). Basically, the mostly likely outcome for MSU is to finish 8-4 / 6-3. But, my math suggests MSU still has a 30% chance to win 9 or 10 games and only a 25% chance to go 7-5 or worse. This is essentially right where we thought MSU was going to be back in the summer, although MSU obviously should have beaten Arizona State. The Spartans just need to steal one (or more) of the remaining tough games to get back on track. It seems to me that MSU is due for a little good luck.
As for the projected spreads going forward, I now have:
  • MSU (+12.9) at Wisconsin ⬆️ (it opened at +10)
  • MSU (+3.4) vs. Penn State ⬇️
  • MSU (-34.4) vs. Illinois ⬇️
  • MSU (-1.6) at Michigan ⬆️
  • MSU (-45.4) at Rutgers ⬆️
  • MSU (-23.5) at Maryland ⬇️
The Penn State game is holding steady, while the Wisconsin and Michigan games are looking a little tougher this week. I still have MSU favored in Ann Arbor, but the margin is down to only a point and a half. It seems unlikely MSU will actually be favored in that game, but right now, my math still favors MSU as the better team.
As for the rest of the Big Ten, Ohio State and Wisconsin both strengthened their positions this week, both by winning themselves, and by having some of their chief division rivals lose (i.e. Iowa and MSU). I now project OSU to have a 94% chance to win the East and Wisconsin to have a 91% chance to win the West. Also note that OSU and Wisconsin now rate #1 and #2 in my updated power rankings. Penn State is now #4. Neat.
The other team that made a notable move up this week was actually Michigan. I have been dogging the Wolverines for weeks due mostly to the fact that they were playing like hot garbage and looked like a team that would struggle to get to 6-6 with their schedule. But, much to my surprise, they actually won this week and impressed my computer enough for them to rocket up the charts to #22 in my power rankings, up from #57 last week. So, now that Michigan has won two in a row is Everything Zen?  Are they ready to challenge for the Big Ten crown? In short, I Don't Think So.  I now have Michigan teetering between 7 and 8 wins over-all. They will likely beat up on Illinois pretty badly next week, and then they begin a gauntlet of games where they could easily lose 5 of 6.

Against the Spread and Upset Review

Considering how badly I blew the Iowa-Michigan game, I expected the overall performance of my algorithm to be a bit shaky. To my surprise, overall against the spread (ATS), I went 28-20 (58%) to bring my year-to-date total to 148-139 (52%). Meanwhile, the FPI had its second good week in a row at 30-18 (63%), but even with that the FPI is under water for the year at 141-146 (49%).  I am not sure if my Machine(head) is really Better Than the Rest, but it has had a solid year so far.
As for my recommended bets, here is the summary for Week 5:

I was pretty nervous about these, since there were so many, but I did well, going 8-6 (57%) bringing my tally to 25-20 (55.6%) year-to-date. The FPI was 1-1 (50%) and 14-11 (56%) YTD. The combined strategy is 38-30 (56%).
As for straight up upsets, here is that summary table

Overall, it was a fairly wild week with 15 total upsets, a bit more than the expected 12. Five of the 15 were upsets where the spread was over 8, with Stanford’s upset over Washington being the largest, and Oregon State’s upset over UCLA in 4th place. It just goes to show, once again, that you can’t just let a favored Pac-12 team sleep over at a friends house and expect things to go well. Seriously. We can’t take you guys anywhere.
As for my algorithm’s performance, I did OK, getting 4 of 9 predictions correct (44%), bringing the YTD totals to 14-16 (47%). The FPI did get its only, sad little upset pick correct bringing its totals for the year up to 8-9 (also 47%).
National Overview

As usual, here are the full results from the week to put things into perspective.


Honestly, this is a pretty boring chart this week, as your biggest over-achiever is Maryland for rolling a Rutgers team that has essentially just given up on life at this point. Other over-achievers include FIU, Ole Miss, Iowa State, USF, and Western Kentucky. Woof. I suppose that I should also point out that Central really laid the wood on Eastern this week as well. Fire Up Chips... I guess.

As for my conference-by-conference hot take (sans the Big Ten, which I covered above):
  • I was quite surprised that Florida beat Auburn this weekend, but the honest question is will it really matter? Auburn is now in a hole and the SEC West is looking more and more like just an LSU-Alabama battle. As for Florida, with road games remaining at LSU, at Missouri, and in Jacksonville vs. Georgia, can they rack up enough wins to take the East?
  • In the Big 12, it's "goodbye" to Oklahoma State and "hello" to... (checks notes...) Baylor? Sure, why not?  Also, Iowa State continues to hang around.
  • In the ACC Coastal Division, Pitt may now be the biggest challenger to Virginia... at least they would be had they not already lost to Virginia in Week 1.  Go away, ACC, you disgust me.
  • There were only 4 games in the Pac 12 this week, and three of them were upsets. I think Oregon is the only team that even cares any more. I think that we should just give them a bye to the Pac 12 title game and let the teams in the South play beer pong to see who gets to face them.  It would really just save the rest of us a lot of time.
  • The most consequential game of the week actually took place on Friday night in the Group of Five, where Cincinnati upset UCF and thus took control of the AAC East.  This upset (which I projected in my summer preview) effectively knocks the Golden Knights out of NY6 / Cotton Bowl contention.  Also, "hello" SMU! You're undefeated? Huh. I guess we will have to start paying attention to you know as well.  
As for my power rankings top 25, I now have:
  1. Ohio State
  2. Wisconsin
  3. Alabama
  4. Penn State
  5. Oregon
  6. LSU
  7. Georgia
  8. Oklahoma
  9. Auburn
  10. Michigan State
  11. Missouri
  12. Clemson
  13. Iowa State
  14. Arizona State
  15. Texas
  16. Memphis
  17. Florida
  18. Oklahoma State
  19. Notre Dame
  20. Baylor
  21. Iowa
  22. Michigan
  23. Washington
  24. UCF
  25. California

Is the Big Ten actually good this year?  Is MSU actually better than Clemson? Math is weird.

Finally, here are my updated playoff projections


I only give 23 teams a non-zero shot to play in the playoffs this year after only 6 weeks, and only 11 teams have better than a 10% chance.  This week, Alabama and LSU jumped into the Top 4 over Georgia and Oklahoma.  

That is all for now. Chins up, Spartan fans, next weeks game is a big one. Until next time, Enjoy and Go Green.

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