MSU Hoops Stats Update: Skid Row

You win some; you lose some.

Coming into last Friday night's game at Illinois, the Michigan State Spartans had won seven straight games, were healthy, and seemed to be hitting their stride. Now, just a few days later, the Spartans find themselves in the two-game losing streak after faltering late against the Fighting Illini and at home against the Purdue Boilermakers.

There is certainly no shame in losing in Champaign or to the No. 3 team in the country, especially back-to-back. But the fact is that Michigan State had multiple possession leads deep into the second half of both games. If a few plays go differently in each game, the Spartans could be in sole possession of first place in the Big Ten. Instead, they are on a two-game skid.

To make matters worse, Malik Hall seems to have reinjured his foot and is now back on the shelf for an undetermined period of time. Things could be going better in East Lansing.

In order to better understand the trajectory of the current Michigan State season and what went wrong in the last two games, let's take a closer look at Spartan's efficiency and at the Four Factors. 

Updated Kenpom Efficiency

Figure 1 below is the updated Kenpom efficiency scatter plot with data through Jan. 16 (after Michigan State's loss to Purdue). For those who may be unfamiliar with this plot, I broke down what all the data means in a previous article.

Figure 1: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of Jan. 17, 2023.

Despite the pair of losses, the Spartans' tempo-adjusted efficiency is largely unchanged. Michigan State has been hovering around an efficiency margin of 15.0 for over a month. 

The only real change is that the Spartans' offensive efficiency has improved slightly while the defensive efficiency has decreased slightly. As a result, the current Michigan State team is starting to resemble the 2017 and 2022 teams who both exited the NCAA Tournament in the second round.

The only other note that I will make on this figure is that the number of national title contenders in the blue "championship zone" is down to just nine teams: Alabama, UCONN, Houston, Kansas, Purdue, Saint Mary's, Texas, UCLA, and Virginia.

Historically, this is a very small number of teams that fit the profile of past champions. In fact, when I compared the current efficiency margins of the top 50 teams (according to Kenpom), the analysis showed that the teams currently ranked No. 8 to No. 40 or so are weaker so far in 2023 compared to the last two years. 

If this trend continues, it is likely that there will be a higher than usual number of NCAA Tournament first round upsets on the No. 3 to No. 6 seed lines. It also suggests that the No. 1 and No. 2 seeds might better odds of advancing. It could also mean that perhaps a lower seeded team (perhaps a No. 7 to No. 11 seed) might make a magic Final Four run if the No. 1 and/or No. 2 seed were to be upset early in any given region. This will be an interesting trend to watch.

Updated Four Factors Data

Let us now turn our focus to the "four factors" which I also explained in detail in a previous article.

Table 1 below summarizes the four factors on both offense and defense for all 14 Big Ten teams.

Table 1: Summary of the "four factors" on both offense and defense for the Big Ten as of Jan. 17.

I also added the overall adjusted offensive and defensive efficiency for each team. The Spartans currently rank No. 40 in Kempon overall which is only good enough for eighth place. Michigan State is below the conference average in all four of the offensive four factors, but slightly better on defense. The Spartans currently lead the conference in defensive rebounding and are above average in effective field goal percentage defense.

For additional context, Figure 2 below shows the four factors box plot for the Spartans. I explained this chart in detail previously, but I am making a few changes this week. The figure below shows Michigan State's historical performance using the boxes and whiskers. The diamonds show the numbers for the current Spartan team, while the horizontal line represents the national median.

Figure 2: Box plot showing Michigan State's historical performance (from 1997 to 2022) in each of the four factors on both offense and defense. These data are compared to the Spartans' current performance, and the national median as of Jan. 17.

As a refresher, the 2023 Spartans are slightly below average shooting and in field goal defense. For the other six factors, the current Michigan State team is an outlier. These Spartans are not turning the ball over, but they are also not creating turnovers on defense. They are not hitting the offensive glass, but they are defensive rebounding at a high level. They are not fouling, but they are also not getting to the free throw line themselves.

To complete this update, I have a new set of graphs to show. Figure 3 shows a summary of the four factors for Michigan State's loss at Illinois.

Figure 3: Summary of Michigan State's performance in the four factors (on both offense and defense) in the 66-75 loss to Illinois on Jan. 13, 2023. 

This Figure shows three bars for each of the eight factors. The first bar is Michigan State's performance in the game in question. The second bar is a comparison to Michigan State's average performance in each category so far this year. The third bar is the average performance for Illinois so far this year in each area.

The first bar in each cluster is color-coded either green (good), yellow (neutral), and red (bad) as a quick visual grade for each factor. Against the Fighting Illini, the Spartans were good in three categories, neutral in two categories, and bad in three categories. 

Based on this data, it is a bit easier to see what went right and wrong in Champaign. The single biggest factor in the loss simply came down to shooting. Michigan State shot the ball very poorly (effective field goal percentage of 43.1%) while the Fighting Illini shot much closer to their season average.

When it comes to generating or preventing shots, Michigan State did well overall. The Spartans limited turnovers and did a very good job on both the offensive and defensive glass. The only negative here was that Illinois somehow did a much better job of taking care of the ball. The turnover rate of just 7.7% was, by far, their best performance of the year.

The other factor that clearly impacted the Spartans was free throw rate. The Fighting Illini got to the foul line a fair amount, but the rate of 30.0 is in alignment with both what Illinois usually gets and what Michigan State usually allows. 

The problem for the Spartans was that they barely got to the free line at all. Michigan State shot only 13 free throws compared to 65 total shots from the field. That said, Illinois only scored five more points at the charity stripe than did the Spartans. Overall, shooting from the field was a much bigger factor.

Figure 4 below provides the same data for Michigan State's loss to Purdue.

Figure 3: Summary of Michigan State's performance in the four factors (on both offense and defense) in the 63-64 loss to Purdue on Jan. 16, 2023.

In this contest, Michigan State was good in two areas, OK in five areas, and only marginally bad in one area.

In general, these numbers suggest that Michigan State was very competitive with the No. 3 team in the country, which the final score certainly indicated. This time, the Spartans shot the ball well and held Purdue to a below average shooting performance. 

Michigan State did have slightly more turnovers than the season average and did just an average job turning over the Boilermakers. But the Spartans did a very respectable job rebounding. As Table 1 shows, Purdue is the best overall rebounding team in the Big Ten, and Michigan State won the rebounding battle overall 30-to-29 while keeping the Boilermakers below their average rate on both sides of the ball.

Even the free throw performance was not as slanted as it could have been, based on Purdue profile coming into the game Purdue had a lower free throw rate than normal and the Spartans actually had a higher free throw rate than the Boilermakers usually allow.

Overall, if the numbers were only a fraction better in any category, Michigan State would have come out of the game with a win.

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Now that MSU is on a two-game skid, can advanced analytics help explain what went wrong? Let's check in with the Spartans' current efficiency and performance in the Four Factors over the past week to see where things stand.