Michigan State Men's Basketball Odds Update: Welcome to the Jungle

 Be careful, Spartan fans. It's a jungle out there.

When I first looked at the Big Ten schedule last fall, it was clear that the schedule in January was not going to be fun and games. A closer look at the schedule also identified the most difficult stretch: back-to-back road games at Wisconsin and at Illinois in the span of four days.

The Spartans went 1-1 over those two games and for 30 minutes or so on Friday night, it looked like it might be 2-0. But the home-town Fighting Illini may the winning plays down the stretch and managed to snap Michigan State's seven-game win streak.

Where does Michigan State stand in the Big Ten race with six games now in the books? Let's run the numbers and see where things stand.

Updated Big Ten Standing, Wins, and Odds

Table 1 below shows the updated enhanced Big Ten standings with 31% of the regular season now complete.

Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 16, 2023.

The Purdue Boilermakers are currently kings of the jungle with a half-game lead over Rutgers. Purdue is also the only Big Ten team with two more road wins than home losses ("plus/minus"). The Scarlet Knights, so far, lead the conference with over a full game worth of positive luck. 

The two teams with the second and third most luck in the conference also happened to be tied for third place in the conference with 4-2 records: Michigan State and Michigan. No other team has fewer than three losses and Iowa is the only other team with more than three wins.

Note that two teams in particular appear to be very unlucky so far this year: Ohio State and Indiana. Both schools are just 2-4 in conference play and both have close to a game-and-a-half of negative luck. The Big Ten jungle seems to have brought those to programs to their knees.

Table 2 below shows the updated Big Ten win matrix. 

Table 2: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of Jan. 16, 2023.

As expected, Purdue continues to lead the conference with an expected win total of 15.8. Rutgers is a full two wins back at 13.65. Third place has a new occupant this week as Illinois made a big move (from eleventh place) up to 11.2 wins.

Similar to the last few updates, fourth place and twelfth place continue to be separated by less than two total games, and there has been a lot of movement in the last week. Iowa (up from tenth place), Michigan (no change), Michigan State (up from eighth place), Penn State (up from twelfth place) and Ohio State (down from third place) currently occupy spots No. 4 to No. 8 with expected win totals between 10 and 11 games.

Meanwhile, Maryland (down from sixth place), Northwestern (down from seventh place), Indiana (down from ninth place), and Wisconsin (down from fourth place) are currently ranked No. 9 through No. 12 with expected win totals between nine and 10 games. Nebraska and Minnesota have already been eaten by jungle cats of some variety.

Table 3 below shows the updated Big Ten Champions odds matrix.

Table 3: Updated odds to win or share the Big Ten title and the win distributions for those winning teams as of Jan. 16, 2023.

Purdue continues to hold a commanding lead in odds with an 85% chance to win or share the regular season title. Rutgers has emerged as essentially the only viable contender (with odds of 22%) unless something changes drastically. The math still suggests that a record of 16-4 will most likely secure the title and only one team wins the regular season crown in 85% of my simulations

Michigan State currently has about a 1.5% chance to win the Big Ten and is expected to win 10.3 games. Table implies that the Spartans have a 45% chance to win 11 or more games and a 25% chance to win 12 or more games. A win over Purdue today would certainly boost all of those numbers.

Strength of Schedule Update

The strength of schedule data has changed very little in the last week. Figure 1 below shows the updated strengths of schedule for the remainder of the Big Ten schedule.

Figure 1: Updated Big Ten strengths of schedule for the remaining conference games as of Jan. 16, 2023.

Similar to last week, Rutgers continues to have the easiest remaining schedule in the conference, which helps to explain why the Scarlet Knights' odds and expected win totals are so high. That said, Rutgers has played the toughest conference schedule so far.  The Scarlet Knights are 5-2 after having faced Purdue once and Ohio State twice.

Michigan State continues to hold the toughest remaining conference schedule. This is remarkable considering the Spartans just finished two road games in two of the toughest buildings in the conference. Indiana's remaining schedule is starting to approach the difficulty of Michigan State's schedule.

For reference, Figure 2 below shows the overall strength of schedule data for each team, including the raw calculations and the corrected value (which attempts to adjust for the benefit or penalty that each team gets for not having the chance to play themselves). 

Figure 2: Updated Big Ten overall strengths of schedule using the raw values (left) and the corrected values (right) which accounts for the benefit (or penalty) for a team to not need to play themselves.

The corrected data suggests that Michigan State's overall schedule is now not quite as bad as Indiana's schedule and Ohio State's schedule (which is why the Hoosiers and Buckeyes are now in a bit of trouble.)  

Furthermore, Michigan now grades out with the easiest (corrected) schedule in the conference. While this may be a blessing in terms of final record, the Wolverines only play Purdue, Rutgers, Ohio State, and Iowa once. Michigan has essentially no quality non-conference wins and the number of opportunities that the Wolverines have to pick up quality conference wins are rapidly vanishing.

Big Ten Tournament Odds

If the season ended today, that would be weird, because there are still 97 Big Ten conference games left. That said, we can accurately project the odds that each team will earn each possible seed in the Big Ten Tournament using the magic of simulation.

Table 4 below provides these odds.

Table 4: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds as of Jan. 16, 2023. The numbers in parentheses are the changes since the previous update last week.

The simulation is confident in the top two seeds (Purdue and Rutgers) and bottom two seeds (Nebraska and Minnesota), but the projections for the other 10 seeds have been scrambled.

The Spartans have the seventh best odds in the conference, but the table shows that the most likely landing spot is the No. 6 seed. That said, if the projected favorites win all the remaining conference games, Michigan State would drop to the No. 9 seed.

In general, the Spartans' projected Big Ten Tournament seed has improved slightly. The odds of earning a double bye by finishing in the top four of the conference ticked up to 22% while the odds of finishing in the bottom four ticked down to 15%.

Table 4 below shows the current odds for each team to advance through the Big Ten Tournament and eventually win the tournament title. As usual, these odds reflect the current Kenpom rankings fairly closely. Purdue continues to lead the way with a 38% chance to raise the tournament banner. Michigan State's odds dipped slightly to under four percent.

Table 5: Odds for each Big Ten team to advance past each round of the Big Ten Tournament, as of Jan. 16, 2023.

Michigan State Schedule and Outlook

Figure 3 below summarizes the projected point spread and win probabilities of all of Michigan State's remaining conference games. 

Figure 3: Odds for MSU to win the remaining Big Ten games, based on Kenpom efficiency margins.

The overall picture has not changed much in the last week. Michigan State projects to be favored in only five of the remaining 14 conference games. Over the next six games, the Spartans only project to be a narrow favorite over Iowa at the Breslin Center.

The math says that the Spartans are expected to win two of the next six games. If this were to come to pass, Michigan State would be 6-6 with eight games remaining. I don't think that any Spartan fan would be happy with this result, but that is what the computers are saying today. Things might get a lot worse before they get better.

At this point, I think that it is important to temper expectations and take things day by day. If Michigan State can weather the storm and survive the Big Ten jungle enough to stay over .500 in January, Coach Izzo will have a chance to tighten the screws in February for the home stretch.

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The Spartans split a recent two-game road trip, but did their odds for Big Ten glory improve? Find out where MSU stands as we await a visit from the current kings of the conference jungle.