MSU Hoops Update for Feb. 3: California Dreaming

The Michigan State Spartans had big dreams for this week's trip to California and a lot to potentially accomplish. The Spartans wanted to celebrate Coach Izzo's 70th birthday last Thursday first by tying Bob Knight's conference win record with a win at USC and then by breaking that record three days later with a win at UCLA.

The Spartans dreamed of being the first Tom Izzo team to start the season 10-0 and then 11-0 in conference play. They dreamed of returning home from the west coast on a 15-game winning streak and a commanding lead in the Big Ten race.

Instead, Michigan State got a rude awakening on Saturday afternoon in the form of a 64-70 loss at USC. It was the first time that the Spartans have tasted defeat since they tasted Thanksgiving turkey. As we will see below, the Spartans are no longer the favorite to win the Big Ten regular season title. 

What went wrong in Los Angeles and what does the loss mean for Michigan State's Big Ten odds? Let's explore these topics starting with the four factors analysis of Saturday's loss

Four Factors for Michigan State at USC

Figure 1 below provides an analysis for Michigan State's 64-70 loss at USC on Feb. 1, 2025.

Figure 1: Summary of the Four Factors in Michigan State's 64-70 loss at USC on Feb. 1, 2025.

Why did Michigan State lose?

As Figure 1 shows, that Spartans did absolutely nothing well against the Trojans. None of the factors on either offense or defense was above Michigan State's seasonal average (which is usually highlighted in green).

The Spartans did OK in offensive rebounding, defensive field goal percentage, and defensive free throw rate in keeping the Trojans under their season averages, but that is the only part of Figure 1 that is remotely positive.

As a result, the raw stats for both teams were all almost identical. Michigan State had a narrow advantage in rebounding (34-to-33) but a narrow disadvantage in turnovers (13-to-11). As a result, the scoring opportunities for both teams were identical. Both teams shot an identical 24-for-57 from the field and both teams shot 19 free throws.

The difference in the game was that USC hit two more three pointers than did Michigan State (7-to-5) and critically, USC had a higher free throw percentage (79% to 58%). That is all it took to lose on the road.

From a full roster point of view, none of the Spartans had a particularly good game, but none of them were terrible either. It was just an all around sleepy performance from the entire roster in every phase of the game. USC did enough things well to keep Michigan State at arms length for the entire game.

Rarely, if ever, so far this season has this roster had such a sluggish performance. The fact that it came just two days after flying 2,200 miles is at least suspicious, even if Tom Izzo does not want to admit that it might have been a factor.

Either way, Tuesday night's game game at UCLA takes on even greater importance. Once again, the Spartans will try to tie the conference win record on behalf of their coach. More importantly, the Spartans need to demonstrate that the loss at USC and the effort that caused it were an isolation incident and not a slump. 

The last two Tom Izzo teams which started 9-0 hit the skids in early February and wound up losing three in a row. Both of those teams then recovered, won the Big Ten and advanced to the Final Four. The 2024-25 Spartans have similar dreams and similar potential. They just need to wake up from their nap.

Updated Big Ten Odds

Let's now check in on the updated Big Ten standings and odds, starting with the new and improved enhanced Big Ten standings.

Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of Feb. 3, 2025

I have added a column at the right side of the figure labeled "SoR." This value indicated my calculated "strength of resume" for each team in conference play. The value is equal to the number of wins over or under the expected number of wins an top 25-quality reference team would have playing each teams' schedule.

Michigan State has a half-game lead over Purdue and an full game lead over Michigan. The Spartans and Wolverines are the only two teams with a "+4" rating, as both teams have four road wins and no home losses. 

Michigan State notably leads the conference in strength of resume at +2.74, ahead of both Purdue (+2.52) and Michigan (+2.25). While it is true that the Spartans have played the easiest conference slate so far, they have both the best record and the best performance at the midway point of conference play.

Table 2 below gives the updated Big Ten win matrix.

Table 2: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of Feb. 3, 2025. All changes (shown in parathesis) are relative to Jan. 29, 2025.

Michigan State's loss at USC, coupled with Purdue's close-shave win at home over Indiana has allowed the Boilermakers (15.01) to leapfrog the Spartans (14.61) in expected conference wins. Michigan (13.95) is more than a half game behind Michigan State with Wisconsin (13.18) and Maryland (13.08) in fourth and fifth place.

UCLA (12.29), Illinois (11.73), Ohio State (11.07), and Oregon (10.56) round out the top half of the conference. The remaining nine teams are all expected to finish under .500 in conference play.

Table 3 below shows how these expected win totals translate into odds to at least share the Big Ten title.

Table 3: Odds to win or share the Big Ten regular season title and the win distributions for those winning teams as of Feb. 3, 2025. All changes (shown in parathesis) are relative to Jan. 29, 2025.

Here I have added a column on the far right of the table indicating the odds for each team to win a solo regular season title. Interestingly, there is still a 70% chance that one only teams hoists a banner at the end of this season.

As Table 1 suggested, Michigan State has dropped to second place on Big Ten odds, falling almost 20 percentage points to 40.9%. Purdue is the new leader at 51.3%, despite being a half game behind the Spartans in the standings.

The Spartans' loss also boosted the dreams of the teams farther down the standings. Michigan's odds (25.6%) improved by 10 percentage points. The odds for Wisconsin (8.9%), Maryland (7.7%), and UCLA (3.2%) received small bumps as well.

As for the Big Ten Tournament, as expected, Michigan State is now trending towards the No. 2 seed. The Spartans have a 79% chance of finishing with a top four seed and double bye in the tournament.

The most likely single season outcome where all the projected favorites win the remaining games gives an interesting outcome. In this scenario, Michigan wins the Big Ten outright with a 16-4 record. Michigan State and Purdue finish in the tie for second place at 15-5, but the Spartans get the No. 2 seed thanks to a head-to-head win over the Boilermakers at Breslin. 

In this scenario, Maryland, UCLA, and Wisconsin finish in a tie for fourth place with Maryland earning the No. 4 seed thanks to a perfect head-to-head record against the Bruins and Badgers.

Dreaming of March

With Michigan State sitting at 18-3, Tom Izzo's 27th consecutive NCAA Tournament appearance is almost a sure thing. In the final segment today, let's take a look at where the Spartans stand in the national landscape. Figure 2 below shows the updated Kenpom scatter plot.

Figure 2: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of Feb. 2, 2025.

The Spartans continue to hover just inside the darker blue area of the graph where borderline National Title contenders reside. The current Michigan State team continues to have a statistical profile similar to that of the 2005 Spartan Final Four team, the 2014 team that reached the Elite Eight, and the 2018 team that was upset in the round of 32.

Figure 2 includes 11 total teams that are located in the darker blue contender zone, including Michigan State, Auburn, Houston, Duke, Illinois, and Tennessee. The lighter blue dark horse contender zone contains an additional nine teams including Michigan, Ohio State, and UCLA.

A few notable teams missing from the list of contenders include Alabama, Purdue, Texas Tech, Gonzaga, and Wisconsin. All five teams are ranked in the top 15 of Kenpom, but all five all also outside of the top 30 in adjusted defensive efficiency. That is not a formula for ultimate success in the NCAA Tournament.

As for eventual seeding in the NCAA Tournament, Michigan State was trending towards a No. 2 seed prior to the loss at USC. For now, the loss has likely bumped the Spartan back down to the No. 3 seed line.

That prediction is based on a formula that I have developed over the years to project the NCAA Tournament seed list using a combination of Kenpom efficiency and my strength of resume metric that I alluded to above. After the loss to USC, Michigan State sits at No. 10 on my projected seed list. 

I also have a formula that attempts to project each team's final position on the seed list after the completion of the regular season. This calculation current places Michigan State at No. 12 on the projected seed list. 

Both values place the Spartans solidly on the No. 3 seed line. Time will only tell if the Green and White will overachieve or underachieve relative to this placement.

Social Media Copy

Michigan State was a bit too sleepy on such a winter's day in Los Angeles this weekend. How much did the loss to USC impact the Spartans' dreams of winning the Big Ten? Dr. Green and White (@paulfanson) ran the numbers so you don't have to.

The Spartans have been sitting at the top of my Big Ten odds table for close to two weeks, but Saturday's loss to USC has knocked the Green and White back a peg. Check out my latest update to learn what went wrong and what's next.