Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

At first glance, the Michigan State Men's Basketball team had a good day on Monday. The Spartans beat the Western Michigan Broncos 80-62 in the final game of both the non-conference season and the calendar year. The No. 18 ranked Spartans are off to an 11-2 start for the first time since 2022. Most experts project that Michigan State is positioned to contend for a Big Ten title and to earn its best NCAA Tournament seed since before COVID.  At the same time, however, the Spartans' performance left a little bit to be desired. Michigan State was sloppy with the ball in committing 17 turnovers. The Spartans gave up 11 offensive rebound and allowed the Broncos to go on a 10-0 run right out of halftime. Michigan State also missed seven layups and shot just 6-for-20 (30%) from deep. While the Green and White won by 18 points, the point spread was over 25 points. Based on all of these measures, it was a lackluster performance. Coach Tom Izzo seemed to agree. "It seemed like we wer...

The 2024-25 college basketball season is underway and most teams in the newly expanded coast-to-coast Big Ten just wrapped play prior to the holidays. In early December each team completed one home and one road game in conference play. Throughout the Michigan State football season, I provided bi-weekly updates on the odds of various season outcomes. I utilized my own power rankings and a set of simulation and other analytical tools to generate these odds. My process for college basketball is very similar. The major difference is that I prefer to use efficiency metrics, specifically those tabulated by Ken Pomeroy ("Kenpom") to estimate point spreads and odds. These data correlate well to point spreads and point spreads correlate to actual game results. There is no reason for me to recreate the wheel. I have recently performed my first simulation of the 2024-25 Big Ten season using the updated Kenpom efficiency data through December 22. The results of the simulation and other c...

Football season may be over in East Lansing, but for hard-core college football fans, the next few weeks truly are the most wonderful time of the year. Between Dec. 14 and Jan. 20, a total of 46 games will be played, including 35 traditional, non-playoff bowl games. That means that there is still data to analyze and potentially dubious bets to be placed. In my previous Against All Odds piece, I went into some detail about how my computer expects the playoffs to shake out. In today's piece, I will primarily focus on the other 35 bowl games. Bowl Overview Table 1 below shows a matrix that summarizes the number of games each conference plays against all the other conferences during bowl season. Table 1: Matrix showing total traditional bowl games and 1st round playoff games each conference plays against each of the other conferences. Cells highlight in green feature two Power Four teams. Cells highlighted in blue feature two Group of Five or Pac-12 teams and cells highlighted in blue...

I have spent a lot of time over the last 15 weeks of college football trying to predict how each conference will shake out and how that will ultimately impact the first ever 12-team college football playoff. After 872 regular season and conference championship games, after a last-second field lifted Clemson over Southern Methodist in the ACC Championship on Saturday night, we finally have an answer to all of these questions. Champions were crowned, bowl spots have been filled, and the bracket is now set. Did the committee get it right? Who will win it all? Did my computer provide any good advice last week? Let's explore all of those questions, starting with the last one. Championship Week Bad Betting Results. Let's take a quick look at the overview summary shown below in Figure 1 which compares the actual result each all nine games in Championship Week with the opening Vegas spread. Figure 1:  Results of  Championship Week showing the actual point differentials relative to the...

Most college basketball teams generate certain stats that follow a predictable pattern. It is a pretty basic principle that a handful of players using wind up playing the majority of the minutes. Take last year's Michigan State basketball team, for example. Tyson Walker, A.J. Hoggard, Malik Hall, and Jaden Akins played between 70% and 80% of the minutes for the season. In 2022-23, Walker and Joey Hauser both played over 80% of the minutes. But this year's version of the Michigan State Spartans team is built a bit differently. Jaden Akins is currently playing just 67% of the minutes. No other player is over 55%. In Saturday's rout of the Nebraska Cornhuskers, 10 different Spartans scored and six of them scored at least eight points. No Spartan played more than 24 minutes.  On Wednesday night in Minneapolis in the Big Ten openers, 12 different Spartans scored at least two points. No one in green and white played more than 26 minutes. These box scores are anomalies for the 202...

The season for the Michigan State Spartans football team has come to an end, but there is still a lot of football to be played before a National Champion is crowned. For the remainder of the season, I will be continuing to issue a few short pieces of analysis. This weekend is there are nine game on the schedule, each of which will crown a new conference champion. Based on the results of those nine games, the College Football Playoff Committee will release the final set of rankings and the resulting bracket for the inaugural 12-team college football playoff. Let's discuss both topics. Championship Weekend Bad Betting Advice With the limited number of games this weekend, I will simply present my summary table of the nine games which includes my projected scores, the opening point spread, and the computers' projected point differentials. See Table 1 below. Table 1:  Summary of Big Ten action in Championship Weekend, including my algorithm's projected scores. The teams shaded i...