Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

As we move to turn the page on the calendar from January to February, we have reached almost exactly the mid-way point of the Big Ten regular season.  MSU observed this milestone by playing and winning perhaps the least anticipated game on the schedule: a home game against doormat Northwestern (no offense, Wildcats).  After a somewhat sleepy first half, MSU took care of business in the second act and did exactly what a championship contender should do against a severely outmatched opponent: they blew them off the court. Good job. While the win was fun, it didn't exactly move the needle much in the big picture of the Big Ten race.  The statistics already had assumed MSU had a 95% chance to win the game, so moving that probability to 100% doesn't change much. Quantitatively, the following table and trend graphs summarize the expected wins total and win matrix for all 14 Big Ten teams following the action on Thursday night. Not surprisingly, MSU's expecte...

Life on the road is tough.  Coming into the four-game stretch that MSU just completed, I knew that there would be some bumps. I was hoping MSU could escape with a 3-1 record, but a 2-2 record would not be a surprise.  Honestly, it was the game at Minnesota that scared me the most.  Just looking at the location and timing of the games, the final stop on the 3-out-of-4 game road trip (on only 2 days rest) seemed like the most likely loss to me.  So, once MSU dropped 2 games in the state of Indiana, I was concerned.  While there is still a lot of basketball yet to by played, it would have been very disappointing to see this team completely squander the commanding lead in the conference race that they had just a few games ago.  Had MSU lost on Sunday, they could no longer consider them the Big Ten favorite, and the team's struggles away from Breslin would be approaching crisis status. Fortunately, that did not happen.  MSU finally showed the same close...

Some days these posts are more fun to write than others. Some days MSU games are more fun to watch than others. I would postulate that those two factors are strongly correlated. For the second time in three games, MSU went on the road in the state of Indiana, got off to a horrible start, and wound up losing.  On a positive note, MSU showed a lot more fight in the second half than they did in West Lafayette and Winston seems to have broken out of his mini-slump in the 2nd half.  However, when it came down to "winning time," Indiana was the team that made the keys plays to win the game while MSU did not.  If you think about it, MSU has been in very few games this year where they faced true game pressure late.  Most of their wins (and a couple of their loses) have been in blow-out fashion.  Last night was a chance to show that this year's version of the Michigan State Spartans could eek out a close game in a hostile environment for the first time since the Seto...

As we enjoy from the MLK long weekend we are now officially 35% of the way through the Big Ten regular season.  At 6-1, MSU has gotten off to almost as good of a start as possible and currently has a full game lead over Illinois and Rutgers in the standings. Friday's win over Wisconsin was a big. The big story, of course, was Cassius Winston's Big Ten record breaking assist.  But, perhaps the most important development was the productivity of the rest of the wings, and the fact that MSU shut down and dominated one of the hottest teams in the conference. When the dust settled on Sunday evening, here is where the current numbers are for the Big Ten race. As usual, the table gives the projected win matrix and expected win totals for all 14 Big Ten teams, based on a simulation backed by Kenpom efficiency margin data.  The visual trends in expected wins are shown below that. MSU's expected win total is now back slightly above 14, which is still a full 2 g...

Another weekend, another rough set of games for the road teams.  After Sunday's action, home teams are now 32-5 overall in Big Ten play. Unfortunately, MSU was one of those road teams on Sunday, and for those that didn't see the game... it didn't go well.  As a results, MSU picked up it's first loss in Big Ten play and dropped a bit in the Kenpom rankings as a result.  But, how much did this impact MSU's projected final record?  The table below shows the updated win matrix and expected win totals for all 14 Big Ten teams, followed by the visual trends back to the start of Big Ten play. MSU's conference expected win total took a major hit, dropping from over 15.5 games to just a bit above 14. Only about a half game is that is based on the actual loss to Purdue (since in was a near toss-up game) so the other ~full game drop was due to a drop in MSU's kenpom efficiency margin and therefore on the odds for all remaining games. But, the good news ...

Another day, another dominating performance by the Spartans.  While MSU seemed a bit sluggish and lacked sharpness, especially in the first half against the Gophers, the Spartans still managed to beat Top 40 Kenpom team by 16. Elsewhere in the Big Ten this week, the homes teams kept racking up wins, including Maryland handing the Buckeyes their 3rd loss, Nebraska upsetting Iowa, Rutgers taking out Penn State, and Michigan surviving 2 OTs against Purdue.  The only road win was Illinois' comeback in Madison against the Badgers.  In total, Big Ten home teams are now 26-4 through 30 games.  For reference, as I check back to last year, at this time home teams were only 19-11.  So, the current level of success for the home teams does appear to be notably unusual. As for the numbers, here is the up-to-date projected win matrix and expected win totals for the Big Ten, followed by the visual trends in expected wins.  Once again, these numbers are the results of ...

We are only 6 days into the new decade and it has already been a very positive year for MSU hoops.  The Spartans got two big wins since the calendar rolled over against Kenpom Top 40 teams.  Furthermore, two of MSU's potential title rivals (Purdue and Ohio State) both took an additional "L" in 2020 so far.  This is particularly significant since my preseason analysis suggested that those two teams (Purdue in particular) had a slight schedule advantage.   But, how do the event impact the overall Big Ten race, numerically?   The following table gives the update Big Ten w:ins matrix and expected win totals after Sunday's action, using the updated Kenpom efficiency data: For a more visual representation, here are the trends in expected wins back to the beginning of Big Ten play: Amazingly, this analysis suggests that MSU has a 2.2 game lead in expected wins after only 4 games played.  That is absolutely huge.  For now, Ohio St...