Since the beginning of the men's basketball season, I have been providing periodic updates from the results of my Monte Carlo simulation of the full Big Ten season.
This simulation provides information such as the expected number of wins each team will earn by the end of the season, conference championship odds, strength and schedule, and Big Ten Tournament odds.
On Tuesday night, Michigan State lost a hard-fought game to the Illinois Fighting Illini to fall to a conference record of just 1-4. Across the internet, Spartans fans began to hit the panic button.
But I am here to tell you that there is no need to panic, at least not yet. The primary reason that I enjoy tinkering with sports-related numbers is that they help me to put the results that I see on the hardwood (or gridiron) into context. They also help to remove the emotional component of the game.
The numbers are a tool that help us to understand the past and to predict the future. These numbers tell me that the Michigan State basketball team is going to be just fine.
Following the loss to Illinois, I reran the Big Ten simulation and found the fate of the Spartans to be virtually unchanged. My calculations suggest that the Michigan State is still most likely to finish with a final record of 11-9 it not 12-8 and safely in the NCAA Tournament (for those who are concerned).
The Spartans are currently sitting ranked No. 17 by Kenpom, No. 26 in the NET, and No. 10 by Bart Torvik (barttorvik.com). These number tell us the Michigan State is good team in solid shape nationally. My further analysis suggest that the early part of the schedule was deceptively difficult. It featured four of the seven toughest games on the Spartans' entire conference schedule, three of which were on the road.
My analysis also suggests that Michigan State have not been very lucky so far this year. Luck is likely to turn around before the end of the season.
Starting on Sunday, the Spartans' schedule gets much easier. Michigan State should be favored in every game except the road game at Wisconsin with the home game against Illinois being a toss-up. My calculations say that the Spartans should go at least 8-4 in that stretch which would get the Green and White back to .500 with three games remaining.
But that assumes that the Spartans' luck will continue to be poor. If the bad luck starts to reverse, Michigan State could easily go 10-2 in that stretch and find themselves sitting at 11-6 as the calendar turns to March with some serious momentum.
Of course, this analysis depends on the idea that on a possession-by-possession basis, Michigan State continues to play as well as they have been playing, on average, all season. It also assumes that the losses and lack of late game execution does not get into their heads.
It that happens, a few more frustrating road losses could crop up, and the Spartans will drift closer to .500 in conference play and the NCAA Tournament bubble. But for now, that is not the most likely outcome.
A Closer Look at Kenpom Efficiency
In my analysis of the Michigan State and Big Ten basketball season so far this year, I have focused primarily on the Big Ten race. The main input into my simulation and analysis is a the set of possession-by-possession offensive and defensive efficiency that is compiled by Ken Pomeroy.
Efficiency data can be used for a lot more than just the Big Ten race. Today I would like to reintroduce one of my favorite college basketball visuals that provides valuable perspective on where the current Michigan State team is located and where they might be headed.
Figure 1 below is what I refer to as the Kenpom efficiency scatter plot with data through Jan. 11.
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| Figure 1: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of Jan. 11, 2024. |
This figure contains a lot of data. When I first introduced this figure last year, I explained the contents in detail. For those who are interested in a more detailed primer on what the different data points mean, I refer you to last year's article.
https://michiganstate.rivals.com/news/michigan-state-hoops-analysis-digging-into-kenpom-efficiency
Briefly, Figure 1 plots the defensive prowess of a given basketball team on the vertical y-axis against the offensive prowess on the horizontal x-axis. A team in the lower right-hand corner is good on offense, but weaker on defense. A team in the upper left-hand corner of the figure is good on defense, but weaker on offense. A team in the upper right-hand corner is good at both.
Team who are good on both offense and defense are naturally contenders to win the National Championship. The shaded blue regions of the figure represent the efficiency profile of past National Champions prior to the start of the NCAA Tournament.
Each National Champion back to 2002 is plotted in Figure 1 as a small, unlabeled blue diamond. Most of these diamonds fall with the darker blue shaded region. However, there are also a handful of outliers with slightly weaker profiles who fall in the lighter blue shaded area.
No team has won the National Championship in the past 22 years or longer if they started the NCAA Tournament with an efficiency profile outside of the blue shaded area in Figure 1.
This makes Figure 1 an excellent reference to quickly determine which teams are legitimate contenders in any given year. The labeled brown triangles in Figure 1 are the teams who currently have an efficiency profile consistent with a national contender.
There are currently only 17 teams which meet those criteria, including Arizona, Purdue, Auburn, Duke, Houston, Illinois, Kansas, Marquette, North Carolina, and Tennessee.
There are a few notable ranked teams who are not on this list including No. 4 UConn, No. 6 Kentucky, No. 14 Baylor (which are all not good enough on defense), and No. 13 Memphis (not good enough in either category.)
As for Michigan State, Figure 1 also documents the final efficiency profile of every Spartan team back to 1997 in the green circles. Each data point is labeled with the year and final NCAA Tournament result of each team.
Finally, Figure 1 shows a series of dark green squares connected by a green line. This data set traces the trajectory of the 2023-24 Spartans' team efficiency profile from the beginning of the season until today.
The Spartans current sit in the light blue area of the Figure just outside the dark blue area. In other words, Michigan State in one of the current 17 teams which owns an efficient profile consistent with past national champions.
Despite the unsightly current win-loss record, Michigan State is still playing well enough to be considered a threat to win the whole thing. Based on this analysis, the Spartans have a better shot to win the national title than does No. 3 Kansas, No. 4 UConn, No. 6 Kentucky, and No. 9 Oklahoma.
We have also already seen that the Spartans can compete with teams such as Arizona, Duke, Illinois, and Tennessee, all of whom also are considered National Title contenders.
The current Michigan State team has a profile that is very similar to the 2008 team that made the Sweet 16 and the 2015 Final Four team. A few weeks ago, the profile was very similar to the 2020 team that was denied a chance to play in the NCAA Tournament due to COVID and whom many experts thought would win it all.
The Spartans spent almost the entire 2022-23 season completely outside the of blue championship zone. Michigan State was one regulation possession and a No. 9 seed away from a Final Four last year.
The final aspect of Figure 1 that I will point out is the green oval and error bars surrounding the current Michigan State data point. This oval represents the most likely final pre-tournament efficiency profile for the 2023-24 Spartans, based on historical Kenpom data over the course of a season.
If the Spartans can continue to improve, Michigan State will continue to drift up and to the right in Figure 1. If this occurs, the profile could start to resemble the 2005 Final Four team, 2014 Regional Final team, or the 2020 team. Even the pessimistic scenario suggests that team would only regress to a level similar to last year's Sweet 16 team.
In other words, the sky is not falling in East Lansing. Far from it.
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