After 14 weeks and 139 total games, the 2022-23 Big Ten regular season of men's basketball is complete. Every Big Ten season contains its own share of drama, but the overall parity of the conference this year made the final weeks more unpredictable than ever.
Just over a week ago, my calculations suggested that the Spartans had only about a 2% chance to earn a double bye in the Big Ten Tournament. When the dust finally settled on Sunday evening, Michigan State (with some help in at least eight of the other final 12 Big Ten contests) completed the season in fourth place and thus beat the odds.
Final Look at the Big Ten Standings
Table 1 below shows the final version of the enhanced Big Ten standings. In this table, I have also highlighted the final luck/grit metric for each team and each team's relative strength of schedule advantage or disadvantage (both measured in wins).
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Table 1: Final enhanced Big Ten standings as of March 6, 2023.
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The strength of schedule metric is calculated based on the number of wins an average Power Five team would be expected to win playing each Big Ten team's schedule. For this purpose, the metric is compared to the Big Ten average. The values for Michigan State and Minnesota were re-scaled to account for the fact that both teams played one fewer game than the other 12 Big Ten members.
Figure 1 below shows the same luck/grit and strength of schedule data in a graphical form.
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| Figure 1: Scatter plot comparing luck/grit and schedule advantage/disadvantage for all 14 Big Ten teams |
The teams with the easiest schedules in 2023 (Illinois, Purdue, and Maryland) had slightly more than a one-game total advantage over the teams with the toughest schedules. In a year where 11 total Big Ten teams finished within three games of each other, this difference matters. Note that in my final analysis, Michigan State finished the season with the second most challenging conference schedule behind only Ohio State
Note that in Figure 1 the magnitude of the luck/grit axis (horizontal) is four times larger than the scale of the vertical schedule axis. What this tells us is that while the impact of the unbalanced Big Ten schedule is important, the luck/grit displayed by each team (the general ability to win close games) is a bigger factor.
In the final analysis, Nebraska (+2.26), Northwestern (+1.99), Indiana (+1.12), and Michigan State (+0.68) were the luckiest teams in the conference while Ohio State (-3.74), Maryland (-1.49), Rutgers (-0.65), and Illinois (-0.58) were the least lucky.
It will be interesting to see how some of these teams perform in the postseason. If Northwestern and Indiana are more lucky than gritty, it may suggest an earlier than expected exit from the Big Ten and NCAA Tournament than expected. Conversely, this data could suggest that Maryland could be slightly underrated.
Big Ten Tournament Overview
The final bracket for the Big Ten Tournament is shown below.
https://twitter.com/B1GMBBall/status/1632578016441249795
Michigan State will begin play on Fridy afternoon against the winner of the game featuring No. 5 Iowa versus No. 12 Wisconsin or No. 13 Ohio State. If the Spartans win on Friday, they will face either No. 1 Purdue, No. 8 Michigan, or No. 9 Rutgers in the tournament semifinals on Saturday at 1 p.m.
Table 2 below summarizes the odds for each Big Ten team to progress through and eventually win the Big Ten Tournament.
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| Table 2: Odds for each Big Ten team to advance past each round of the Big Ten Tournament, as of March 6, 2023. |
Based on my calculations, Purdue continues to hold the best odds to win the tournament at just under 35%. Three other teams (No. 6 Maryland, No. 3 Indiana, and No. 4 Michigan State) all have roughly a 12% chance to claim a championship.
No. 2 Northwestern, No. 7 Illinois, and No. 5 Iowa all have between a 5% and 7% chance to win the tournament. No. 9 Rutgers, No. 10 Penn State, and No. 8 Michigan all have roughly a 3% chance, and the remaining teams all have at best a 1% chance.
The opening money line bets for each team to win the tournament (from DraftKings) align well with the odds that I calculate. If my odds are correct, bets on 13 of the 14 teams have slightly negative returns on investment. The only team where my calculations suggest that a bet might be warranted is Iowa.
For the record, if Michigan State were to have played and beaten Minnesota. The Spartans would have finished in a three-way tie with Indiana and Northwestern for second place. In this scenario, Northwestern would have remained the No. 2 seed (with a 3-0 record against the other two teams), Michigan State would have earned the No. 3 seed (with a 1-2 record) and Indiana (1-3) would have dropped to the No. 4 seed.
That said, if the Spartans were to have played and lost to Minnesota, Michigan State would have dropped into a five-way tie for fourth place with Michigan, Maryland, Iowa, and Illinois. The Spartans would have wound up with the No. 5 seed in this scenario. Iowa would have jumped up to the No. 4 seed and Illinois and Maryland would have changed places relative to the real final bracket.
Bracketology and NCAA Tournament Outlook
It seems like this time of year everyone is a bracketologist. The bracket matrix website is a convenient place to see a compilation of over 100 online brackets. Figure 2 below summarizes where Michigan State is projected to land on Selection Sunday based on the bracket matrix data
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| Figure 2: Distribution of Michigan State's projected seeds, as of March 7 and as reported by the bracket matrix website |
Close to three-quarters of the online brackets have the Spartans as a No. 7 seed with almost 20% of the brackets placing Michigan State on the No. 6 line. A handful of other brackets show the Spartans as a No. 5 or a No. 8 seed.
My seed-predicting algorithm also has Michigan State as a No. 7 seed. But the Big Ten Tournament provides an opportunity for the Spartans to potentially improve (and hopefully not damage) the final seed.
Based on the Big Ten Tournament bracket, the worst-case scenario would likely be if the Spartans were to be upset in the first game by No. 5 Iowa or (worse yet) No. 12 Wisconsin or No. 13 Ohio State. If this were to happen, my calculations suggest that the Spartans could potentially slip onto the No. 8/9 line. My gut feeling is that the Spartans are solidly locked into at least No. 7 seed, but I would feel better with a win on Friday.
If Michigan State does make the Big Ten Tournament semifinals, I think that the No. 6 seed becomes a possibility. If the Spartans beat Purdue in that game, I think that a No. 6 seed becomes more likely than not.
Could the Spartans jump up as far as a No. 5 seed with three wins and a Big Ten Tournament title? I believe that this is possible, but not likely. The Selection Committee has a very bad track record of seeming to ignoring the results of the Conference Tournament Finals that take place on the afternoon of Selection Sunday. I expect that trend to continue this year.
Once the NCAA Tournament begins, what can Michigan State fans expect? To help answer this question, I will return to the updated Kenpom efficiency scatter plot, which is shown below in Figure 3.
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Figure 3: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of March 7, 2023.
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A lot has changed in the Spartans' profile over the final few weeks of the season. For several weeks, the Spartan's efficiency hovered near 15.0. But starting with the win over Maryland on Feb. 7, Michigan State has been sitting at an efficiency margin closer to 17.0.
As Tom Izzo has also pointed out, the Spartans have improved offensively, but they have also regressed defensively. Prior to the start of the Big Ten Tournament, the 2022-23 Spartan now most resemble Coach Izzo's team from 2002, which lost to North Carolina State in the first round.
That said, if Michigan State can improve defensively to a level of efficiency that they have displayed for most of the year, it is possible that the Spartans could enter the blue championship zone by Sunday afternoon and start to resemble the 2008 Sweet 16 team or even the 2015 Final Four team.
If Michigan State can improve defensively and maintain their current efficiency on offense, I believe that a potential run in the NCAA Tournament is certainly possible. Figure 3 also continues to show a general weakness in the field this year.
Only 11 teams nationally have efficiency profiles consistent with any of the past 20 national champions. Those teams are Houston, UCLA, Alabama, UCONN, Tennessee, Purdue, Saint Mary's College, Texas, Kansas, Creighton, and San Diego State. All of those teams are beatable.
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