Just 12 days ago, MSU's season seemed to be on the brink. The Spartans had just come off from back-to-back loses to Iowa and Purdue and were sitting 4-9 in conference play and just barely over .500 overall. Fans and pundits alike were lamenting about the loss of MSU's NCAA Tournament streak, like it was a foregone conclusion.
But starting on a Saturday afternoon in Bloomington, Indiana, Michigan State's season started to turn around. The Spartans have now won four of the last five games, and six of the last nine games. With Tuesday night's thrilling (if ugly) win over the Hoosiers, once again, the Spartans now seem to be on a more positive brink, the brink of an NCAA Tournament bid.
I have been saying for weeks that getting to eight Big Ten regular season wins was a major milestone in the hunt for an at-large NCAA Tournament bid. Two weeks ago, getting to that number seemed like a long shot. Today, that milestone is in the rear view mirror.
So, what is next for the Michigan State basketball team? Once again, let's dig into the numbers to see what we can learn about this final leg of the Big Ten regular season.
Quick Odds Update
Below are the updated enhanced Big Ten standings and Big Ten win distributions in Tables 1 and 2.
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| Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of March 3, 2021 |
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| Table 2: Big Ten win distribution as of March 3, 2021 |
In addition, today I will also show the visual of the Big Ten luck metric, which is also summarized in Table 1.
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| Figure 1: Big Ten luck metric as of March 3, 2021 |
From the standings, we can see that MSU is now in ninth place in the the conference. From the odds distribution table, we can see that it is likely that the Spartans should stay in this part of the standings, even if the Green and White get swept by the Wolverines.
Indiana has less than a 30 percent chance to tie MSU in the win column, while Minnesota has less than a 20 percent chance. Both of these things would need to happen in order to MSU to fall behind those two teams in the standings and down to eleventh place. MSU would lose the tie-breaker to both teams due to winning percentage (Indiana is only playing 19 games) or head-to-head (Minnesota). Penn State, Northwestern, and Nebraska cannot pass MSU at this point.
For the win distribution table, we can now see the exact odds for the three possible results of the home-at-home series with Michigan. MSU has a one percent chance to win both, a 22 percent chance to split and a 77 percent chance to get swept. If we add the odds that Illinois beats Ohio State (53 percent) the results say that Michigan still has a 99.5 percent chance to win the Big Ten outright.
Finally, I will just point out that over the course of a month, the Spartans have moved from the least lucky team in the Big Ten to the most lucky. Based on expected value, MSU has now won a game-and-half more than they should have. While in reality this is likely a combination of actual luck and a newly found grit, it is certainly notable.
Big Ten Tournament Projections
If the season ended today, that would be weird, because only 125 total Big Ten games have been played (92 percent of the season). When ESPN, FOX, or the Big Ten Network show the graphic of the Big Ten Tournament seeds "if the season ended today," it is more-or-less a meaningless exercise, because it is referencing a scenario that cannot exist in reality (an incomplete season).
It is far better to project the results of the remaining games to really understand what the final tournament bracket is likely to look like. I provide that data and analysis below in Table 3.
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| Table 3: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds, based on a Monte Carlo simulation of the rest of the season as well as what would happed if the currently favored teams won all remaining conference games |
As I mentioned in my previous update, beating Indiana was huge because is virtually guarantees that MSU gets at least the No. 10 seed and thus does not have to start play until Thursday in Indianapolis. For a team that is struggling with fatigue and tired legs, this is a big, big deal.
In addition, MSU will also now almost certainly play another team in the top 50 of the NET rankings, which means there will no longer be a concern about taking a "bad loss" before Selection Sunday. That is also a major positive.
At the top of the conference, the top three seeds are virtually settled as No. 1 Michigan, No. 2 Illinois, and No. 3 Iowa, with Purdue now with the upper hand to claim the No. 4 seed if the Boilermakers can take care of Indiana this weekend or if Illinois beats Ohio State. The bottom of the bracket is also almost fixed with Northwestern and Nebraska almost locked in to the bottom two seeds.
Seeds No. 6 to No. 12 are all still somewhat up for grabs. As for MSU, I have further broken down the odds for MSU's potential seed and first round opponents below in Table 4:
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| Table 4: Odds for different first opponents for MSU in the Big Ten Tournament |
Right now, the odds that MSU will face either Maryland or Rutgers on Thursday is almost identical at 34 percent, but the odds of a rematch with Maryland (27 percent) are not far behind. If MSU were to get very unlucky and fall to the No. 11 seed, they would almost certainly face Nebraska on Wednesday.
If all of the currently projected favorites win the remaining Big Ten games, Table 3 suggests that MSU will draw the No. 9 seed and face off with Wisconsin on Thursday.
Note that there are a very small number of other very low probability cases where MSU could face Indiana, Minnesota, or Northwestern first, but the odds of each of those scenarios is lower than a tenth of a percent.
Out of curiosity, I also ran a simulation of the results of the Big Ten tournament using the seeds for the mostly likely single scenario (where the favorites all win). The results of that simulation are shown below in Table 5
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| Table 5: Simulated results of the Big Ten Tournament, assuming seeding if all of the projected favorites win the remaining regular season games. |
MSU's current Kenpom efficiency is still lagging behind some of the other Big Ten teams near MSU in the standings, and as a result, MSU's projected odds are still vanishingly small 0.13 percent). That said, even if the Spartans can suddenly start playing as efficiently as a team like Wisconsin has, on average, the odds that the Spartans could win four games in four days is still likely less than five percent.
Tournament Dashboard
When I put all of this information together, I have my revised Tournament streak dashboard as shown in Figure 2:
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| Figure 2: MSU's NCAA Tournament streak dashboard, as of March 3, 2021 |
As usual, the data here is a mixed bag. Based on MSU's Kenpom rating of No. 60 (and similarly low NET ranking of No. 71) there is certainly reason for concern. That said, the two other metrics that I set as benchmarks: the odds of going 8-12 or getting a top 10 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, have already been (mostly) cleared. So, which is it. Are the Spartans in or out?
The honest answer is that no one knows. Some pundits (such as ESPN's Joe Lunardi) seem to have moved MSU back into the tournament from the bubble after the win over Indiana. Other pundits (such as CBS's Jerry Palm) have had MSU safely in the field since the win over Ohio State.
But, the only people whose opinion really matters are the members of the actual NCAA Selection Committee and the metrics that they value seem to change slightly form year to year. If this committee believes that metrics such as the raw NET ranking and maybe Kenpom ranking are the most important, MSU could be in trouble still.
However, if they value quality wins, avoiding bad losses, winning on the road, and finishing in the top 10 of one of the most difficult leagues in the entire Kenpom era (since 2002), then MSU could be safe even now. Furthermore, if they consider that MSU's performance was clearly negatively affected by the COVID-19 pause, much like teams are sometimes impacted by injuries, that could play in MSU's favor.
If MSU were to win at least one more game, I would be shocked if they were left out of the NCAA Tournament. As such, I have replaced the odds to win the Big Ten Tournament in the dashboard wiht the odds that MSU wins at least one more game this year (including in the Big Ten Tournament, based on the data in the section above). Those odds are also now squarely at 50-50.
If you want my honest opinion, I think that MSU is already safe. But then again, I am an optimist. I would certainly feel a lot better about this prediction if MSU were to one or two or three more games here in the regular season and/or the Big Ten Tournament. The next chance to achieve that goal will take place Thursday night in Ann Arbor.
Just to make things easier on the committee, I say we just go out and beat those Wolverines, possibly more than once. What do you say?
Go Green.
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