Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

I must admit that coming into Saturday's game against the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, I was a bit pessimistic about how the game might go. I was nervous despite Michigan State's flawless record in conference play, despite the metrics and the large Vegas spread, and even despite the injury report which showed Rutgers center Emmanuel Ogbole as out for the season and freshman star point guard Dylan Harper as questionable with a twisted ankle. The sources of my pessimism were varied. First, Madison Square Gardens has been a house of horrors for Tom Izzo and the Spartans. Prior to Saturday, Izzo's record in the building was just 4-13. Second, Rutgers is a well-coached, rugged team with two potential top five NBA draft picks in Harper and in forward Ace Bailey.  Third, there is an odd, but documented trend that Izzo-coached teams tend to show a slump in performance at the end of January and early February. Saturday's game was located squarely in the center of the "Tom Izzo ...

Coming into Sunday's game with the Fighting Illini, there was some criticism that while the Michigan State Spartans were alone in first place in the Big Ten, they had faced a relatively weak Big Ten schedule. Mathematically, I can confirm that statement is true. As of Sunday morning, the Spartans had played the easiest schedule of all Big Ten teams. But after beating an Illinois team that Tom Izzo stated he believes is "the best team in the league right now," Michigan State remains as the only unbeaten team in league play. Easy schedule or not, Michigan State is still perfect, and that is no easy task. Afterall, Illinois could not get a win at Northwestern and took a bad loss to USC at home. Michigan came back from Minnesota with a loss and needed overtime to survive a home game with Northwestern. Purdue lost on the road at Penn State and on Tuesday night lost a home game against Ohio State. Those three teams are the Spartans' biggest competition in the Big Ten race a...

On Wednesday night in East Lansing, the Michigan State Spartans beat the Penn State Nittany Lions by the score of 90-85. The Spartans appeared to struggle on the defensive side of the ball, especially in the second half, and failed to put Penn State away in the final minutes. Both fans and Coach Izzo were a bit annoyed by the lackluster performance. Then again, Michigan State never trailed against Penn State on Wednesday night. The margin only got below two possessions once in the final 15 minutes of the game for a period of 18 seconds. While the Spartans had to fight through some amount of game pressure, the threat of an upset was minimal. The situation was simply a departure from the recent trend of beating conference teams at Breslin by over 30 points. The Spartans weren't the only Big Ten contender that struggled over the past week. Purdue is traveling to the Pacific Northwest this week and found themselves down by 10 points late in the second half at Washington on Wednesday. T...

The Big Ten schedule is setting them up and so far the Michigan State Spartans are knocking them down. This time around, the Spartans went into Evanston, Ill. and knocked off Chicago's Big Ten team. On Sunday afternoon Michigan State prevailed over Northwestern, 78-68 to move to 5-0 in conference play. The other notable outcome of the weekend was Illinois' somewhat shocking home loss to lowly USC. In contrast, Michigan and Purdue plugged along, each picking up double-digit wins at home. As a result, the updated enhanced Big Ten standings are shown below in Table 1. Table 1:  Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 14, 2025. Based on the games completed through Monday night, the updated Big Ten win matrix is shown below in Table 2. These expected win totals are based on the results of a 1,000,000-cycle Monte Carlo simulation of the remainder of the Big Ten regular season. Table 2:  Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of  Jan. 14, 2025 . The Michigan ...

Throughout the Big Ten basketball season. I have historically conducted an analysis on the results of a series simulations which provides various odds regarding the trajectory of the Michigan State men's basketball season and the Big Ten race as a whole.  In addition, I have provided additional analysis of Michigan State and the Big Ten race using Kenpom efficiency data compared to historical data and the set of statistics known as the "four factors of basketball success." As the season goes on, the data changes almost daily. This post is meant to be a one-stop shop for the most updated data on the Big Ten race. In addition, this post will contain a explanation of how to read each table or figure. Analysis of the data will be done elsewhere. This post contains "just the facts." Last Update: Jan. 13, 2025 Percentage of Big Ten games completed: 48 of 180 games (27%) Enhanced Big Ten Standings Table 1:  Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 13, 2025. Table 1 below ...