Michigan State Men's Basketball Odds Update: How about dem Spartans?

On Thursday night in the Jack Breslin Student Events Center, there were a lot of things for Michigan State Spartan fans to feel good about. The Spartans shook off a two-game losing streak with a much-needed win over the visiting Rutgers Scarlet Knights. 

It wasn't just that the Spartans won, it was also the way that they won and who they beat. Rutgers is no longer the Big Ten doormat that they were in the first five years or so of their membership in the conference. These Scarlet Knights are a ranked, well-coached, tough as nails Tournament team and bona-fide conference contenders.

Michigan State did not just win by making a few more plays down the homestretch by feeding off the raucous home crowd. No. These Spartans took control of the game late in the first half and never relinquished it. Furthermore, there were no late-game meltdowns. These Spartans slowly extended the lead in the second and won going away, 70-57. 

Perhaps most importantly, these Spartans did it with their most versatile players, senior forward Malik Hall, sitting on the bench. These are all very encouraging signs.

For perhaps the first time all year, Michigan State had a convincing win over a quality opponent that did not end as a nail-biter. So, yes, there was a lot to feel good about on Thursday night. But, how much did this win impact the Spartans' place in the Big Ten race? Let's dig into the numbers and find out.

Updated Big Ten Standing, Wins, and Odds

Table 1 below shows the updated enhanced Big Ten standings with 36% of the regular season now complete.

Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 20, 2023.

Michigan State's loss last Monday to Purdue and the win over Rutgers leave the Spartans in a two-way tie for second place with Rutgers at 5-3 in conference play. Purdue has now opened up a two-game lead in the conference race at 7-1. Furthermore, Purdue has four more road wins than home loses ("+4") while no other Big Ten team has a plus/minus rating higher than +1. 

Also of note is that over half of the conference (eight teams in all) have either three or four wins as well as three or four losses. To say that there is a logjam in the middle of the Big Ten would be an understatement. 

As for luck, half of the conference is showing between and half and three-quarters of a game of positive luck, including Purdue, Rutgers, and Michigan State. Four other teams, including Iowa, have fairly neutral luck. So far, the unluckiest Big Ten teams appear to be Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio State, all of which have between one and two games of negative luck.

Table 2 below shows the updated Big Ten win matrix as of Jan. 20 and based on the results of a 100,000-cycle Monte Carlo simulation which uses Kenpom efficiencies to derive the odds for all remaining Big Ten games.

Table 2: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of Jan. 20, 2023.

Even considering the loss to Purdue, Michigan State's strong performance in the last week has improved the Spartans' efficiency margin by almost a full point. Furthermore, Michigan State's expected win total is up over half of a game to 10.9 wins. This value is currently good enough for fourth place and is less than a tenth of a game behind third place Iowa (11.0).

As expected, Purdue's conference lead in expected wins (16.1) has been extended to over three full wins over second place Rutgers (12.8). Similar to the actual standings shown in Table 1, the expected win values show a similar logjam in the middle. The difference between third place Iowa (11.0) and twelfth place Ohio State (9.21) is less than two wins.

The win distribution values in Table 2 give Michigan State just below a 60% chance to win at least 11 games, a 36% chance to win at least 12 games, and an 18% chance to win 13 games or more.

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. 20, 2023.

The Boilermakers' grip on the conference lead continues to get tighter and tighter. Purdue now wins or shares a Big Ten regular season title in over 92% of my simulations. Rutgers' odds are still second best in the league, but they are down to below 10%. Iowa (2.2%), Michigan State (1.8%), Indiana (1.4%), and Illinois (1.0%) are the only other teams with conference title odds over one percent.

The odds are even approaching 50% that Purdue will claim the title with no more than three losses. In addition, the odds that the conference title is shared is also just over 10%. At the current trajectory, the regular season Big Ten race will have little to no drama in the final week or two.

Strength of Schedule Update

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 (SoS) for the remaining conference games as of Jan. 20, 2023. SoS is calculated as the expected win percentage an average high-major team would have if they were to play each team's remaining schedule.

For a brief few days this week, Michigan State's remaining schedule was not the most difficult one in the conference. The Spartans slid down to third place behind Indiana and Ohio State. But as of Friday, Jan. 20, Michigan State is back on top of this dubious metric.

This figure once again helps to explain the data in the previous section. Rutgers has five times better odds than Michigan State to win the Big Ten in large part due to their easier remaining schedule. Rutgers' advantage is equivalent to just over one full win in the final standings.

Another thing to note here is that Indiana (3-4) and especially Ohio State (2-5) may both be in bigger trouble than their fanbases may realize. Based on the difficulty of the remaining schedule, both teams could struggle to get over .500 by the end of the season. The Spartans will certainly try to help the Hoosiers remain below .500 on Sunday afternoon.

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.

Big Ten Tournament Odds

If the season ended today, that would be weird, because there are still 89 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. 20, 2023. The numbers in parentheses are the changes since the previous update last week.

Michigan State made a significant move this week into one of the top four double bye spots of the Tournament seed matrix. My simulation gives the Spartans a 36% chance to stay in the top four along with (for now) Purdue, Rutgers, and Iowa. 

That said, in the scenario where all of the projected favored teams win the remaining games, Michigan State would slip to the No. 5 seed and Indiana would instead earn a double bye. 

Table 5 below shows the current odds for each team to advance through the Big Ten Tournament and eventually win the tournament title. 

Table 5: Odds for each Big Ten team to advance past each round of the Big Ten Tournament, as of Jan. 20, 2023.

Purdue has just under a 40% chance to hang a Big Ten Tournament banner with Rutgers in second place at 12%. 

Interestingly, despite the evidence which suggests that Indiana and Ohio State are struggling and will continue to struggle in the regular season race, the Hoosiers (eight percent) and Buckeyes (seven percent) hold the third and fourth best odds to win the postseason tournament. This is due exclusively to the fact that those teams' efficiency margins also currently rank No. 3 and No. 4 in the Big Ten according to Kenpom.

Michigan State's current Big Ten Tournament odds sit just under six percent, which is within a few percentage points of over half of the conference.

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.

Just after the New Year, I singled out the current five-game stretch of the Spartans' schedule (starting at Wisconsin and ending on Sunday at Indiana) over a 13-day span to be the most challenging of the season. I proposed that Michigan State needs to win at least two of those five games to stay on track. 

Fortunately, the Spartans got the two wins at Wisconsin and versus Rutgers, and they played very competitive games against Illinois and Purdue. Now Michigan State can look to be greedy on Sunday in Bloomington before getting three full days off prior to the home game against Iowa next Thursday.

Coach Izzo has complained a lot over the last few weeks about the challenging schedule and he has not been wrong. The good news is that the path looks to get a bit easier for the rest of the season. 

Based on Figure 3, the Spartans project to be favored in half of the remaining 12 conference games with the road game in Ann Arbor now looking closer to a toss-up. This is a notable improvement since just last week. In addition, the games are a bit more spaced out going forward. Michigan State will get almost a full week off between the road games at Purdue and at Rutgers (in Madison Square Garden).

That said, the next four games include three of the four toughest games remaining on the schedule (at Indiana, at Purdue, and at Rutgers). Michigan State only projects to be favored in the home game against Iowa and the odds generate an expected win total of about 1.5 games.

Therefore, if the Spartans can simply get the split over the next four games, the record will stay over .500 and Michigan State will be well positioned for a stretch run to at least finish somewhere in the top four teams in the conference. Anything more than that would be gravy.