MSU Basketball Odds Update: Badgered

Friday night's game in Madison presented a tremendous opportunity for the Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team. The Spartans were on a roll, having won three straight games and eight out of the last 10. A win over Wisconsin would have padded the Spartans' NCAA Tournament resume and allowed Michigan State to stay in the Big Ten race.

Instead, the Spartans fell on their face, never led, and wound up losing by 15 points. What went wrong in the trip to America's Dairy Land and what does it mean for the future? Let's dig into the data and find out.

Note that the full set of data (and details on how to read the figures) related to Michigan State and the Big Ten race can be found in the odds and data tracker. Today's analysis will highlight the key information and what it all means for the Spartans going forward.

What Went Wrong At Wisconsin?

The best place to start in the autopsy of a 15-point loss is with the four factors. Figure 1 below provides these data.

Figure 1: Summary of the Four Factors in Michigan State's loss at Wisconsin on Jan. 26.

So, what went wrong in Madison? The simple answer is "everything." 

Of the eight total solid bars in Figure 1 which represent the Spartans' performance against Wisconsin, five of them are red (poor performance) and two of them are yellow (mediocre performance). The only area where Michigan State performed better than average was in avoiding turnovers on offense.

An obvious and consistent area of concern for this Michigan State team is rebounding. The 2023-24 team is on track to be one of the worst rebounding team in the Tom Izzo era and Friday night was no different. The Spartans surrendered offensive rebounds on 40% of the Badgers' missed shots while only snagging 26% of their own misses.

In many games this year, Michigan State has offset below average rebounding with historically low turnovers and the ability to create steals on defense. While the Spartans did protect the ball on Friday, they failed to generate as many turnovers as usual (just 9.5%).

Michigan State is also struggling to generate points on the free throw line. This has been a major issue in every Big Ten loss with the exception of the loss at Northwestern. If we consider the number of times A.J. Hoggard and Tyson Walker attack the rim, suffice it to say that this statistic seems odd.

But at the end of the day, the most important of the four factors is shooting from the field and Michigan State lost this category badly on Friday night. The Spartans were well below their average in effective field goal percentage at 46.7% while Wisconsin shot well over their average at 58.8%. 

If a team gets outshot from the field, does not generate extra shots from turnovers or rebounds, and cannot generate offense from the free throw line, that team is going to lose 100% of the time.

What the Loss Means For the Spartans

If the Spartans would have defeated Wisconsin, we could have started to talk about potential paths to a Big Ten regular season title. But the loss has effectively ended any realistic chance of a title. My latest simulation gives Michigan State just a 0.3% chance. That ship has effectively sailed.

Table 1 below shows the updated Big Ten win matrix following Michigan State's loss to Wisconsin.

Table 1: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of Jan. 27, 2024.

Michigan State's expected win total has slipped down to 11.35 wins. There is now a slightly better chance (52%) that the Spartans finish with 11 wins or fewer than there is that Michigan State will finish with 12 wins or more. The odds of finishing with at least 11 wins is still a strong 72%.

A more visual representation of the likely final regular season outcome for Michigan State is shown below in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Regular season Big Ten win probability distribution for Michigan State as of Jan. 27, 2024.

With the Big Ten regular season title now out of reach, the focus shifts to positioning for the Big Ten Tournament and the NCAA Tournament. As Table 1 implies, the Spartans remain in fourth place in expected wins. However, instead of looking up and thinking about passing Illinois, Wisconsin, or Purdue, Michigan State (11.35) now needs to be concerned about staying ahead of Northwestern (11.12) and Nebraska (11.04).

Based on Kempon efficiency data, the Spartans would still be expected to beat both the Wildcats and the Corn Huskers on a neutral court. However, Michigan State is currently 0-2 against those two teams and will not have a chance to play Nebraska again in the regular season.

In addition, Nebraska (No. 2) and Northwestern (No. 3) are two of the three Big Ten teams that have a slightly easier remaining Big Ten schedule than the Spartans. 

The current situation is best illustrated by the updated Big Ten Tournament seeding odds shown below in Table 2.

Table 2: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds as of Jan. 27, 2024.

Overall, Michigan State still has the fourth best expected seed. However, a closer look at the data shows that both Nebraska (34.3%) and Northwestern (33.9%) have slightly better odds than Michigan State (32.6%) of earning a double bye (top four seed) in the Big Ten Tournament.

The early season losses at Nebraska and at Northwestern and the fact that both of those teams have a win over likely champion Purdue have put the Spartans in a weak position to win any tiebreaker with either team. It is going to be a dog fight for fourth place going forward.

Looking Ahead to the Rest of the Regular Season

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.

There is some good news for Spartan fans, however. Despite the 4-5 record, the remainder of the schedule is much easier. Michigan State is projected as the favorite in all but one of the remaining Big Ten games. The road game at Purdue is the obvious exception.

The next eight games will provide a great chance for Michigan State to go on a run and tighten the screws in preparation for the postseason. But even though the Spartans are favored in all eight games, it is very unlikely that Michigan State will go 8-0 in this stretch. The odds of a sweep are just 7%.

Instead, the math suggests that a 6-2 record in this stretch is most likely, which would give the Spartans a record of 10-7 headed into the game at Purdue. This should be considered the target over the next month. 

The home game on Feb. 10 against Illinois looms very large. So far the Spartans have struggled to pick up quality wins outside of the beat down of Baylor back in December. If Michigan State cannot get the win over the Illini, there is a very good chance that the Spartans will be 0-7 against the teams in the top half of the conference in early March. This would be a dubious stat on the Spartans' resume come Selection Sunday.

Will the Luck Turn Around?

In the final segment for today, I wanted to once again address the topic of luck. To illustrate this, Table 3 below shows the current enhanced Big Ten standings.

Table 3: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 27, 2024

Michigan State continue to have bad luck (-1.44) so far in Big Ten play. Only Ohio State (-1.75) is worse. Michigan (-1.19) is the only other Big Ten team with more than a game of negative luck so far this season.

The Spartans' bad luck can also be illustrated by the following fact. Based on retroactive and projected point spreads, Michigan State has already played five of the toughest seven games on their conference schedule. The Spartans have lost all five of those games.

Is this bad luck likely to continue or will it turn around? Is it truly luck or is it a form a grit that a team either has or does not have?

In an attempt to answer that question, I looked at how my calculated luck metric has changed for each Big Ten team over the past two seasons. Specifically, I compared the luck in the first 10 Big Ten games to the luck in the last 10 games for both the 2022 and 2023 conference seasons. The result of this calculations is shown below in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Comparison of "luck" in Big Ten games for the first and and second half of the 2022 and 2023 conference schedule.

As we can see from the Figure, there is only a small correlation between the luck that a team had in the first 10 conference games and the luck in the final 10 conference games over the last two years. Out of 28 possible teams, only last year's Ohio State team and the 2022 Iowa team had more than one game of bad luck in both halves of a season.

Moreover, only 11 teams of the 28 had both positive or negative luck in both halves of a given season. The majority of the teams "regressed to the mean" over the course of all 20 games. 

One could argue that the small correlation, especially for the teams with very high or low luck values, is an indicator that "grit" is a factor with some teams. I would agree with this. However, the data as a whole suggests that "luck" is primarily just that.

This analysis suggests that it is more likely than not that the Spartans' luck will turn around and that Michigan State will overachieve in the second half of the season. If true, a final record of 12-8 or 13-7 is certainly possible, if not likely.

It also suggests that both Nebraska (+0.53) and Northwestern (+2.13) may be due for a downturn. If Spartans fans are looking for a reason to be optimistic, this is it.