MSU Hoop Odds Update for Jan. 14

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 Wolverines current sit at the top of the table with an expected conference win total of 15.32 wins. The Spartans sit less than a game back at 14.51 wins with Purdue in third place at 14.29 wins. The Fighting Illini took over a game-and-a-half hit over the weekend to drop to just 13.16 expected wins.

Table 3 below gives the current odds for the top 12 teams to win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title based on the same simulation.

Table 3: Odds to win or share the Big Ten regular season title and the win distributions for those winning teams as of Jan. 14, 2025.

As things stand on Jan. 14, the Wolverines have just below 50-50 odds to hang a regular season banner. Michigan State has the next best odds at 32%, with Purdue (26%), and Illinois (11%) as the only other two teams with current odds over 6%.

Table 3 also suggests that while the single most likely record needed to win the regular season title is 16-4 (with 32% odds), it is more likely than not (52%) that at least a record of 17-3 will be needed to secure at least a share of the title. There is a 21% chance that the Big Ten Champion(s) will have a record of 18-2 or better.

If the projected favorites were to win all 130 remaining conference games, Michigan would finish at 18-2 and in first place. Michigan State would finish in second place at 17-3 with Purdue and Illinois tied for third place at 15-5. In this scenario, Illinois would claim the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament thanks to a head-to-head win in Champaign over the Boilermakers.

Why is Michigan in the Lead?

Just a glance at the enhanced standings shown in Table 1 has the two mitten-state schools tied at the top of the conference. Yet, the Wolverines are almost a full game (0.80) ahead in expected wins and 18 percentage points ahead in title odds. Why is that?

First, according the predictive metrics that underpin my simulation, the Wolverines are considered a slightly better team. Kenpom has Michigan ranked No. 10 and Michigan State ranked No. 14. This small difference suggests that the Wolverines would be favored by about one point over the Spartans on a neutral court.

This is razor thin margin, but it translated into about a 3.5 percentage point advantage per remaining game. With 15 games left for both teams, that adds up to a little over half of a game advantage.

The second contribution is due to the strengths of schedule for the two teams. Figure 1 below gives the updated overall strength of schedule data for the full conference.

Figure 3: Big Ten overall strengths of schedule as of Jan. 14, 2025. The y-axis shows win percentage and the labels show the expected number of wins.

As things stand on Monday, Jan. 14, the Spartans' overall Big Ten schedule grades out as very slightly easier than the Wolverines' schedule by 0.02 games. This is a nearly negligible difference, and a closer look at each team's schedule shows why.

The two teams share 10 of the 20 games on the schedule. Both teams play Penn State, Oregon, Washington, Illinois, and Purdue at home and Minnesota, Rutgers, USC, Ohio State, and UCLA on the road. The in-state rivals also play each other twice, which is basically a wash. This leaves just eight other games that differ.

Michigan State draws Minnesota (No. 104) at home while Michigan draws Rutgers (No. 85). That is essentially a draw. 

Currently, Northwestern (No. 55) and Indiana (No. 56) have almost identical Kenpom rankings. Similarly, Iowa (No. 38) and Nebraska (No. 41) are very similarly ranked. The same can be said about Wisconsin (No. 23) and Maryland (No. 24) and Purdue (No. 12) and Illinois (No. 13).

Outside of the games already mentioned, Michigan State plays Northwestern, Iowa, Maryland, and Illinois on the road and Indiana, Nebraska, Wisconsin, and Purdue at home. Michigan faces each of those teams in the opposite venue. 

But if the Kenpom rankings are a true estimate of the strength of each team, playing Northwestern on the road is equally as difficult as playing Indiana on the road. Playing Nebraska at home is as difficult as playing Iowa, and so on. The average difficultly of those eight game for both Michigan and Michigan State cancel out.

Michigan's current schedule advantage is due to the difficulty of the schedule already in the books. Figure 4 below shows the strength of schedule for each Big Ten game only considering the remaining games.

Figure 4: Updated Big Ten strengths of schedule for the remaining conference games as of Jan. 14, 2025.

In this analysis, Michigan's remaining schedule is 0.33 games easier than the Spartans' schedule. This accounts for about 38% of the Wolverine's current advantage in expected wins. The overall higher Kenpom efficiency accounts for the rest.

Michigan State projects to have the third hardest remaining conference schedule behind only Rutgers and Indiana. But we knew coming into the season that the schedule is backloaded. The Spartans have already played three of the easiest six games on the schedule (at Minnesota, versus Nebraska, and versus Washington).

The Spartans did get a win over Ohio State which projects as the fifth toughest game on the schedule, but Michigan already has wins at Wisconsin (No. 3 on the Wolverines' schedule and similar to a road game at Maryland) and at UCLA (No. 4). 

The Wolverines have already played and won one more tough game than have the Spartans. Michigan State will have the opportunity to match those performances in the coming weeks.

Schedule Check In

Figure 5 below gives an update of the odds and projected point spreads that the 15 remaining Big Ten games on Michigan State's schedule.

Figure 5: Odds for MSU to win the remaining Big Ten games, based on Kenpom efficiency margins.

The fairly soft start to the conference schedule continues as the Spartans are projected to be favored in each of the next eight games, five of which are at home. In six of those games, the spread is projected to be over 5.5-points, which translates to at least a 70% chance of victory for Michigan State in each of those contests.

Of the two more challenging games in this stretch, Illinois (+3, projected) comes to town this weekend and this is a game that Michigan State simply must win if they are true Big Ten contenders. Losing at home is simply not an options. 

The most difficult game in this stretch is the road game at UCLA, which currently projects as a toss-up. But with the Bruins in a four-game losing streak tailspin, that game looks more winnable by the minute.

The overall odds give an expected win total of 5.96 over the next eight games, suggesting that a 11-2 record heading into the road game at Illinois is most likely. In other words, the Spartans are likely to stumble once or twice.

On the other hand, Table 1 shows that the Green and White are already +1.24 games in the the "luck/grit" metric. That is what good teams do. They win more games than expected. If the Spartans continue to play like a "good team," a record of 12-1 or even 13-0 by Valentines Day is certainly possible.

At the beginning of the season, my analysis suggested that a record of 8-2 or 9-1 at the midpoint of the season and a record of 11-2 by Valentines Day was optimistic. So far, the Spartans are ahead of schedule.

But the Big Ten season is a long and hard road with many potential bumps. The trick is to take care of business, one game at a time. 

If you enjoyed this analysis and want to stay up to date on the Spartans' place in the Big Ten race, check out the data and stats tracker. I will continue to update the numbers there are nearly a daily basis. 

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The Big Ten basketball standings currently show a tie at the top, but one of the teams from the Mitten State currently has slightly better odds to hang a banner. Dr. Green and White (@paulfanson) checks in  to tell you which team has the edge and why.

Now that my Big Ten basketball data and stats tracker in firmly in place, I plan to pop in a couple times a week with an update and some focused analysis. Today, I put Big Ten strength of schedule back under the microscope.