Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

The last time I provided a metrics and odds update for MSU and the Big Ten, the situation was much different. The Spartans were undefeated and in the Top 5. The Big Ten campaign was about to start and many prognosticators were starting to predict that Michigan State might just win a fourth consecutive Big Ten regular season title.  But, MSU took a trip to Evanston and came back with an 'L.' Then, the Spartan's Christmas Day house guest left MSU fans feeling blue. Now, MSU is 0-2 to start Big Ten play. How bad is it? I have once again crunched the number and I think that I have the answer. Before looking at the data, however, I will note that I have made a significant improvement to my simulation. I found a few old mid-season Kenpom data files on my hard drive for the 2019 season. This gave me a way to estimate the how much the adjusted efficiency data is likely to change over time. Figure 1 below compares these changes for all Division One teams between January 4th, 2019 an...

Well, what can I say. It's been a long, hard, weird year. It looked for a while like college football wasn't going to happen at all. Some have argued that it was a fools errand to even try. It certainly did not go perfectly, but we have officially made it to bowl season.  MSU might be done for the year, but there is still football left to played and that means that there are still numbers to crunch. By my count, there are 27 bowls still to play. Let's have fun with it. So, for one last time this year, I would like to provide you the reader with a final dose of Bad Betting Advice Bowl Picks Figures 1 and 2 give the final computer projections for the year, both from my algorithm and the FPI, respectively. Figure 1:  Bowl game result projections from my algorithm relative to the opening Vegas lines Figure 2:  Bowl game result projections from ESPN's FPI relative to the opening Vegas lines As always, the upset picks for the week can be extracted based on the games that fall...

First of all, I wanted to just thank you for agreeing to this meeting today. As we all know, these conversations can be difficult. But in situations like these, HR strongly recommends an exit interview both for your benefit as well as for ours. I am sure that you understand. 2020, you arrived almost 12 months ago with so much promise. We look forward every December to the new arrival in January with the hope that the future will be brighter and better than the previous year. You got off to a decent start, too. Michigan State won the Big Ten in basketball and was trending up in early March. MSU hired a new football coach that brought a new energy to the football program. We were all optimistic. But in March, your performance really tanked. A global pandemic, the likes of which the world has not seen in 100 years? Unbelievable. Seriously. That was terrible. We all expected better of you. What were you thinking? Over the summer, during our six-month check in, you promised to do better. Yo...

Over the past several weeks, I have presented a series of analyses where I used Ken Pomeroy's efficiency data to make various projections about the upcoming Big Ten basketball season. While the robustness of this type of efficiency data this early and in such an unusual season is certainly debatable, it does provide a useful tool with which one can objectively look at the upcoming season. As MSU prepares to take on the first Big Ten opponent of the year on Sunday in Evanston, I thought that it would be a good exercise to look at MSU's entire schedule as a whole to get a feel for how the season might ebb and flow. To conduct this analysis, I used the current Kenpom data and projected the current win probability for all 20 of MSU's currently scheduled games. The full schedule is visualized below in Figure 1. Figure 1: Projected win probabilities for MSU's 2020-21 basketball schedule with road games denoted by the black boxes The logo on top of each bar represents MSU'...

Dear Santa, How's it going, big guy? As you know, it's been a pretty wild year everywhere south of the arctic circle. I am sure that your army of elves has filled you in on COVID-19. It sucks pretty hard, honestly. The kids are wondering if we are going to be able to see Grandma is person this year.  I hear that you are immune and are still going to be able to make the rounds this year without any problems. Something about 800-year old elf magic, right? That's a relief. I was afraid that you were going to have to wear a mask, have your temperature checked, change your shoes, and apply hand sanitizer before dropping off each and every load of presents. That's a lot of extra time for a man on a deadline. Plus, you'd have to bring an extra sleigh full of lotion just to keep your hands from falling off. I am sure that you have also heard that it's been a tough year for MSU fans. The year started off well. The men's basketball team won the Big Ten and really hit ...

Let's start off with the good news: the Gruff Sparty helmets were exactly as sweet as we had hoped and expected. Amiright? Do not adjust your set, the Gruff Sparty helmet has arrived and it is glorious. Speaking of adjusting my set, let's talk about the MSU offense, especially in the first half. Was that not the best that MSU's offense and quarterback have looked all year? In his first career start, Payton Thorne went 11-for-13 with three touchdowns in the first half. Trevon Morgan hauled in both his first career catch and first career touchdown on the same play. Freshman running Jordan Simmons picked up five yards or more on eight of his 14 total carries for the game.  When MSU went into the break with a 21-10 lead, I honestly thought that the Spartans were going to win, just as they had when they started strong against Michigan and Northwestern. Who could deny the power of Gruff Sparty? Then, something completely shocking and unexpected happened: Penn State coach James Fr...

For the last month or so, I have posted a series of pieces digging deep into the numbers of the upcoming Big Ten basketball race. I ran a series of season simulations to estimate the odds for each team to win the Big Ten regular season, the odds for seeding and the ultimate results of the Big Ten Tournament, and I performed an extensive study of Big Ten strength of schedule. However, one limitation of this initial round of analysis was that it depended solely on the accuracy of Ken Pomeroy's preseason rankings. While these number provide a good starting point, no one really knew back in mid November how good any of these teams really would be. Now that roughly a month of basketball is in the books, we have some actual data. We still don't know a lot, but we know more than we did a month ago. The first Big Ten basketball game will be played on Sunday at 2 PM as Penn State travels to Michigan. So today give a final chance to refresh the calculations before the Big Ten season star...