2025-26 Big Ten Basketball Math-Driven Preview

The 2025-26 college basketball season is underway all Big Ten teams have completed play for the Christmas holiday break. 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 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 set of simulation of the 2025-26 Big Ten season using the updated Kenpom efficiency data through December 24. The results of the simulation and other calculations can tell us a lot about how the Big Ten season will progress. In this week's two-part series, I will share what I found.

How Good is the Competition?

The single most important factor in how the Big Ten season will shake out is the relative strength of each team. Good teams tend to win more games than not-so-good teams. The best place to start in this analysis is to review the current Kenpom ranking of all 18 Big Ten teams, which I have summarized below in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Current and preseason Kenpom adjusted efficiency margins for all 18 Big Ten teams. Each bar is labeled with the Kenpom ranking as of Dec. 25.

Figure 1 includes both the current Kenpom efficiencies and rankings as well as the preseason rankings published by Kenpom on Oct. 15. Note that already a fair amount of movement has occurred in the efficiency of some of the teams. 

Several teams are off to better starts than expected. Michigan, Iowa, and Nebraska have seen the biggest jump. On the other side of the ledger, Maryland, Rutgers, and Oregon have seen the biggest decline.

A glance at Figure 1 provides a quick overview of the different potential tiers of the conference. 

The Michigan Wolverines currently hold the No. 1 spot in Kenpom efficiency margin with No. 5 Purdue also residing in the top five. No. 9 Illinois and No. 13 Michigan State are both solidly in the top 15 with No. 18 Iowa and No. 22 Nebraska rounding out the six Big Ten teams currently in the top 25 in Kenpom.

No. 31 Indiana, No. 32 UCLA, and No. 34 Ohio State are located in the upper part of the 30s while No. 38 USC is still in the top 40. The 10 Big Ten teams mentioned above all are projected to have a solid chance to reach the NCAA Tournament. The remaining eight teams will likely struggle to qualify for the Big Dance.

No. 43 Wisconsin, No. 47 Washington, and No. 54 Northwestern are all at least still in the top 60 nationally. No. 74 Oregon is off to a very slow start but is at least safely in the top 100. The remaining four teams cannot make that claim. 

No. 100 Minnesota, No. 101 Maryland, No. 128 Penn State, and No. 159 Rutgers currently reside in the Big Ten basement.

But expect a fair amount of movement in the Kenpom rankings between now and Selection Sunday. At this point last year, eventual regular season champions Michigan State was ranked just fourth in the conference behind Maryland, Oregon, and UCLA. 

Ohio State failed to make the NCAA Tournament last year, but in late December of 2024, the Buckeyes had a better Kenpom efficiency margin than Wisconsin, which went on to earn the second-best NCAA Tournament seed (No. 4) behind only the Spartans.

Strength of Schedule

In an ideal world, the Big Ten regular season schedule would consist of 34 games such that each team could face every other team twice, once on the road and once at home. Instead, there are only 20 conference games meaning each Big Ten team will play only three opponents twice, seven opponents at home only, and seven opponents on the road only.  

This creates an imbalance in the schedule which does benefit some teams, and which hurts others. But how big is this effect and which teams benefit or suffer?

Table 1 below shows a matrix that summarizes the full Big Ten schedule.

Table 1: Big Ten composite schedule showing each team's double-play opponents (in white), home only opponents (green for the team in question's row) and road only (shaded yellow).

The white cells in the matrix indicate teams that play each other twice. The green shaded cells represent the situation where there is only one regular season contest and the team in the row is at home. The yellow shaded cells represent the situation where the team in the row is on the road.

For example, Michigan State will play Michigan, Indiana, and Rutgers twice. The Spartans will face Purdue, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Washington, Oregon, Minnesota, and Penn State on the road only. Michigan State draws Illinois, Iowa, UCLA, USC, Ohio State, Northwestern, and Maryland only at home.

A glance at Table 1 gives an initial impression of the relative difficulty of each schedule. If a team's row (or column) has a lot of "2s" on the left-hand side (or top) and more "1s" on the right/bottom, this indicates a tougher schedule and vice versa. 

Another slightly more quantitative indication is shown in the bottom row of the table. Here I tabulated the average efficiency margin of the opponents that each team plays twice. The higher this number, in general, the harder the schedule. This implies that the team plays more of the good teams twice and the weaker teams only once.

Fortunately, I have a more mathematically rigorous method to calculate strength of schedule. I use the concept of expected value and run a sort of experiment where a hypothetical top-25-quality reference team plays every Big Ten schedule. 

The question that I ask is "how many games would this reference team be expected to win?" Mathematically this is equal to the sum of the odds for the reference team to which each game.

Figure 2 below shows the results of this calculation as of Dec 25. The expected wins are normalized to 20 games, yielding an expected winning percentage as the metric for comparison.

Figure 2: Big Ten overall strengths of schedule as of Dec. 25. The y-axis shows the expected win percentage for an average top 25 playing each team's schedule and the labels show the expected number of wins.

As Figure 2 shows, the teams with the easiest schedules appear to be Michigan, Illinois, UCLA, and USC. The teams with the most difficult schedules are Northwestern, Maryland, and Penn State.

Michigan State, Purdue, Washington, and Rutgers have slightly easier schedules than average. Wisconsin, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oregon, and Indiana have slightly harder schedules than average. Ohio State and Iowa both have almost perfectly average schedules.

I have studied the concept of strength of schedule extensively over the past few years. Back in May, I performed a deep dive of the impact of the different scheduling patterns that the Big Ten conference has used over the years. 

Through this exercise, I have learned that two factors that impact strength of schedule the most. The first factor is the strength of the teams themselves. Strong teams tend to have easier schedules than weaker teams.

The explanation for this phenomenon is that good teams have a built-in advantage of not having to play themselves. For teams at the bottom of the rankings, they lose out on the opportunity to beat a team as bad as they are. This trend is always present in the data.

The second factor is the strength of the "double play" teams on each schedule, as the identity of those three teams is the biggest difference between the schedules. Whether any specific game is played at home or on the road is just a minor factor, as mathematically, those differences tend to cancel out.

The results of Figure 2 demonstrate the combination of the two main factors impacting strength of schedule. The top teams in the conference such as Michigan, Illinois, Michigan State, and Purdue are tend to have easier than average schedules due to the built-in advantage of not having to play themselves. However, there are some notable deviations.

Teams such as UCLA, USC, and Rutgers have an easier overall schedule than expected due to the identity of the double-play opponents. Both UCLA and USC avoid playing any of the top seven teams in the conference twice. Rutgers has the advantage of drawing two of the weakest teams in the conference (Maryland and Penn State) twice.

On the other side of the coin, Iowa, Nebraska, and Indiana all have more challenging schedules than expected. All three teams have two double-play opponents that are currently ranked in the top six of the conference according to Kenpom.

As for Michigan State, the Spartans have a relatively balanced schedule. Michigan State has the disadvantage of drawing Michigan twice, but the advantage of also drawing the worst team in the conference (Rutgers) twice. The remaining double-play opponent (Indiana) is predicted to be in the middle of the pack.

This year I conceived a new way to adjust for the impact of each team not playing themselves. I adjusted the strength of schedule calculation for each team by artificially adding a single game on each schedule where a team effectively plays itself on a neutral court.

For example, for the calculation of the Spartans' adjusted strength of schedule, I added one game to the Michigan State schedule where the reference team plays the Spartans on a neutral court. The results of this analysis are shown below in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Big Ten overall strengths of schedule as of Dec. 25 adjusted to minimize the impact of each team not having to play themselves. The y-axis shows the expected win percentage for an average top 25 playing each team's schedule and the labels show the expected number of wins if a single game against themselves on a neutral court is artificially added to each schedule.

Figure 3 reinforces some of the conclusions from above. Of the top six contenders, Iowa, Purdue, and Nebraska all drew relatively difficult schedules while Illinois has the easiest schedule of the contenders. Michigan has a slightly easier than the average adjusted schedule and Michigan State has a slightly tougher than average adjusted schedule.

The other information provided by Figures 2 and 3 is the quantitative difference between a difficult and easy conference schedule. Overall and from the point of view of total expected wins, Figure 2 reveals that the easiest conference schedule belonging to Michigan (10.95 expected wins for the reference team) is slightly less than a full game easier than the Penn State schedule (10.03 expected wins).

However, Figure 3 shows that this difference is almost entirely due to the difference in relative strength between the teams teams. If this effect is removed, the difference between the hardest and easiest schedule falls into a range of just half a game for all schedules other than the one played by Rutgers.

According to Figure 2, Michigan State does have about a half-game disadvantage compared to both Michigan and Illinois. But if either of those teams end up being weaker than currently expected, Figure 3 suggests that advantage will be less than a quarter of a game.

I mentioned above that the impact of whether a single game is played at home or on the road has only a small impact on the overall strength of schedule. That said, it should be noted that Michigan has to play each of the other top five teams on the road and only draws Michigan State at home. Similarly, Illinois only draws Michigan at home and must travel to Purdue, Michigan State, and Iowa.

In contrast, Purdue draws Michigan, Illinois, and Michigan State only once each and all three games will be in the comfortable confines of Mackey Arena in West Lafayette. If the Big Ten is close this year, those subtle advantages and disadvantages may become more significant.

The analysis above gives an overview of the Big Ten as a whole, including a clarification of the impact that the overall schedule will have on the Big Ten race. In part two of this series, we will dig into the details of the Michigan State Spartans' schedule and we will see what it all means in terms of who will eventually win the Big Ten title.

Stay tuned.

Part Two:

In part one of my Big Ten Basketball math-driven preview, I presented an overview of the relative strength of all 18 Big Ten teams. Then, we investigated the overall Big Ten schedule in order to understand the impact of having an easy or difficult slate.

We found that Michigan State is currently ranked among the best teams in the Big Ten. The Spartans have a slightly easier schedule than many teams in the conference, but overall the difference between the easiest schedule in the league (belonging to Michigan) and the hardest schedule (which belongs to Penn State) is only worth about one game in the standings out of 20 total games.

In today's contribution, we will dig into the details of Michigan State's schedule. Then, we will put all the pieces together to see how the Big Ten race is likely to play out.

Michigan State Schedule Details

Let's begin by take a closer look at Michigan State's schedule to get a flavor on the potential ebb and flow of Big Ten conference play.

Figure 1 below visualizes the schedule by showing the projected point spreads and victory odds for the remaining 18 Big Ten games.

Figure 1: Odds for Michigan State to win each Big Ten game, based on Kenpom efficiency margin as of Dec. 25. Road games are indicated by a logo with a black border.

For the big-picture point of view, the data in Figure 1 gives the expected number of wins for the Spartans, which is equal to the sum of the 18 probabilities for Michigan State to win each remaining game plus two for the two wins already in the books. That value is currently 13.8 wins. Figure 1 also suggests that the Spartans currently project to be favored in 14 of the remaining 18 Big Ten contests. 

Michigan State currently projects to be a double-digit favorite in four of the remaining Big Ten games. These include both games against Rutgers and the home games against Maryland and Northwestern. The Spartans have over an 85% chance to win each of those four games.

In six other conference games, Michigan State is projected to be between a 6.5- and ten-point favorite which translates to between a 75% and 85% chance to win. These games include the home games against USC, UCLA, Indiana, and Ohio State as well as the road games at Minnesota and at Oregon.

While the Spartans will be big favorites in each of those ten games, the expected number of wins (i.e. the sum of the odds to win each game) is just 8.35. This suggests that dropping at least one game in that stretch is more likely than not. Dropping two of those 10 games would signal trouble.

Keep in mind that last year Michigan State dropped a home game to Indiana as a 10.5-point favorite. Every team usually has a one or two inexplicable bad days throughout the season. The trick is always to minimize these bad games as much as possible.

The Spartans are projected to be more narrow favorites in four of the remaining games on the schedules. This includes the home game against Illinois and road games at Oregon, Indiana, and Wisconsin. Michigan State is likely to be between a one and four-point favorite in each of those four games.  

The expected win total in that stretch is just 2.34 wins. Winning three of those four would be considered a success.

Finally, Michigan State is currently projected to be an underdog in the four remaining games on the schedule which include both games against Michigan and the road games at Purdue and at Nebraska. The upcoming game at Lincoln is close to a toss up, but the Green and White are trending as a five to 11-point underdog in the other three games.

The expected win total in this stretch is just 1.15 wins. The Spartans need to find a way to get at least one win in this group of games, if not two in order to stay in the hunt for a Big Ten title. If the Spartans can overachieve in each of the three segments of the schedule, a final record of 16-4 is a reasonable goal.

In looking at the schedule chronologically, it is clear that the next Big Ten game at Nebraska on Friday, Jan. 2 looms large. This is currently projected to be the fourth toughest game on the conference schedule. A win over the Corn Huskers would set up the Spartans for a very strong start to conference play, much like a win in Columbus over Ohio State last year on Jan. 3 set the stage for a 9-0 Big Ten start.

The seven games following the game at Nebraska are all very winnable. This stretch includes four home games against teams that will struggle to make the NCAA Tournament and just two road trips, one of which is to Rutgers. The west coast road trip to Washington and Oregon is also included, but this pair of games is expected to be quite a bit easier than last year's trip to Los Angeles. 

The Spartans likely will need to be sitting at 9-1 or better at the midway point of conference play in order to realistically have a chance at the Big Ten regular season title. Then, on Friday, Jan. 30, the Michigan Wolverines are coming to East Lansing in what may be the most critical game of the season. 

This a game that Michigan State flat out needs to win, no matter what both teams are ranked at the time and even if the Spartans will be playing the third game in seven days.

The next five games to start the month of February include some challenges, but generally look manageable. This stretch includes road games at Minnesota and at Wisconsin as well as a home game against Illinois. 

These games are also spaced out a bit more, which will provide a little time for rest and final tinkering from Tom Izzo's staff. Dropping a game in this stretch would not be a disaster.

Most likely, the Big Ten race and the Spartans' fate will be decided by what happens in the final four-game stretch of the season and specifically in the three road games at Purdue, Indiana, and at Michigan to close out the regular season. If the Spartans can find a way to win two of those three road games, a repeat Big Ten Title is a real possibility.

Overall Big Ten Odds

So far, we have explored the relative strength of each Big Ten team and the strengths of each teams' schedule. Now it is time to put the pieces together and forecast how the entire season will play out.

Using Kenpom efficiency margins data, it is possible to estimate the point spread and therefore win probabilities for all 180 Big Ten conference games. With this knowledge, it is possible to run a Monte Carlo simulation on the entire season. This is essentially a gigantic coin flip experiment with a weighted coin representing all 180 games. 

I set the simulation to test out 500,000 full Big Ten seasons to determine the odds for each team to win any number of games and to win the conference. I can also extract odds for eventual Big Ten Tournament seeding and even the outcome of the tournament itself. 

I also take the additional step of modifying the simulation to add a historically accurate amount of variance in the quality of each team. The current Kenpom efficiency margins for each team are not necessarily an accurate measure of each team's true strength. As we get closer to Selection Sunday, the variance decreases. I account for this variance. To my knowledge, this aspect of my simulation makes it state-of-the-art.

Table 1 below shows the initial set of results from this simulation. Specifically, it shows the odds that each Big Ten team will finish with any number of total conference wins, from zero to 20.

able 1: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix as of Dec. 25, 2025. The changes shown in Kenpom efficiency and expected wins are relative to Dec. 2 2025.

Note that the changes shown in Kenpom efficiency and expected wins are relative to an earlier simulation that I ran on Dec. 2, 2025. As expected, the expected win totals largely mirror the current Kenpom efficiency data, with some minor impact from the strengths of schedule.

Based on the expected win totals, Michigan currently leads the way with 17.47 expected wins. Purdue (15.62), Illinois (14.32), and Michigan State (13.74) make up the rest of the top four.

Nebraska (12.60), Iowa (12.02), and UCLA (11.85) are all clustered around 12 wins. Ohio State (10.53), Indiana (10.27), and USC (10.05) are clustered around 10 wins. Wisconsin (9.38) and Washington (9.25) are most like to finished just under .500.

Moving down the standings, Northwestern (7.06) is projected to finish just ahead of the cluster of teams consisting of Oregon (6.36), Minnesota (6.33), and Maryland (5.51). Brining up the rear is Penn State (3.93) and Rutgers (3.69) both of which might struggle to get to four conference wins.

That said, there is a very high level of variance in this simulation result. This is due both to the uncertainty in how good any of these teams actually are as well as luck. The final Big Ten standings are likely to look a bit different. Last year Michigan State won 4.2 more games than my simulation predicted in December of 2024.

Figure 2 below charts the win distribution for Michigan State using the data from Table 1.

Figure 2: Regular season Big Ten win distribution for Michigan State as of Dec. 25, 2025

My current simulation give Michigan State just under a 10% chance to win 17 games or more. There is a 38% chance that the Spartans finish at least 15-5 and a 47% chance that Michigan State finishes with between 12 and 14 wins. There is just a 15% chance that the Spartans finish at 11-9 or worse.

The odds to win or share the Big Ten regular season title are shown below in Table 2.

Table 2: Odds to win or share the Big Ten regular season title and the win distributions for those winning teams as of Dec. 25, 2025.

The table shows the odds for each team to win or share the title along with the number of wins needed to finish in first place.

This analysis suggests that Michigan is the current overwhelming favorite to win the conference with 61% odds overall and with a 56% chance to win a solo title. Purdue is the next most likely champion with odds of 22%.

Illinois (7%) and Michigan State (5%) are considered dark horse contenders at this point. Three other teams have odds between 0.5% and 2% (Nebraska, Iowa, and UCLA) while the rest of the conference is already virtually out of the race. 

In fact, both Penn State and Rutgers failed to win the conference in any of the 500,000 simulations that I ran, even when uncertainty in the strength of each team is included in the calculations.

Based on the strength of the teams at the top of the conference, a very strong record will likely be needed to hang a Big Ten regular season banner. My simulation suggests that 18-2 is the most likely record for the eventual Big Ten Champion(s). 

There is a 35% chance that the eventual champions will have a record of 19-1 or better and close to a 10% chance that the champion will run the table.

That all said, this simulation is heavily influenced by the extremely high current Kempon efficiency of Michigan and to a lessor extend Purdue. While both teams are talented and generally off to good starts, there are reasons to suspect that neither team is significantly better than the other top teams in the conference.

I expect both teams to regress to the mean a bit more as Big Ten play gets underway. It is a long season full of twist, turns, and bumps. Championships are won in February and March and not by blowing away non-Tournament teams in November and December.

As for Big Ten Tournament seeding, Table 3 below shows the odds for each team to receive each possible seed. Unlike last year, the 2026 Big Ten Tournament will include all 18 conference teams. 

Table 3: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds as of Dec. 23, 2024.

At this point in the season, this data mirrors the expected win data very closely. Michigan State currently projects to be the No. 3 seed or the No. 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament depending on how one looks at the data.

The Spartans will get the No. 3 seed in the single most likely scenario where the projected favorite wins every conference game. Michigan State finishes at 15-4 and in tie with Illinois for third place in this scenario and would win the head-to-head tie breaker with the Fighting Illinois for the No. 3 seed. 

The No. 3 seed is the single most likely seed for the Spartans but Michigan State's has the fourth highest expected seed (which is a weighted average of the probabilities). 

My simulation also can project the most likely first opponent for Michigan State in the Big Ten Tournament which is Iowa (9.1%) most likely in scenarios where the Hawkeyes are the No. 6 seed.

Table 4 breaks down the seed data based on which day each team will start tournament play.

Table 4: Odds for each Big Ten team to receive a triple bye, a double bye, a single bye, or no bye in the 2026 Big Ten Tournament.

Right now, Michigan State has a 53% chance to receive a triple bye as a top four seed, and a 42% chance to start the tournament on Thursday with a double bye. There is less than a 10% chance that the Spartans will earn a No. 9 seed or lower and need to start Big Ten Tournament play on Tuesday or Wednesday.

Finally, Table 5 below shows the current odds for each team to win the Big Ten tournament.

Table 5: Odds for each Big Ten team to advance past each round of the Big Ten Tournament, as of Dec. 25, 2025

In general, the odds to win the Big Ten Tournament will mirror Kenpom efficiency margins and the regular season Big Ten odds. Michigan (48%) has the best odds to repeat as Big Ten Tournament Champions with Purdue (20%) as the next most likely winner.

Illinois (13%) and Michigan State (7%) both have solid odds with Iowa (3.6%), Nebraska (2.9%), UCLA (1.6%), Indiana (1.4%), and Ohio State (1.0%) as possible longshots.

Right now in late December, we are still learning how good many of the Big Ten teams really are. Some teams are likely a bit better than Kenpom expects while others are likely a little worse. Schedule seems to be a less important factor than in previous years, which means that luck and/or grit will also play a slightly larger role in deciding a champion.

As the regular season progresses, one or more teams will likely rise above the rest by displaying a better overall level of skill. After that, one or more teams will likely need to show that they have the luck and/or grit to win more close games than they lose. With a little bit of luck and a little bit of grit Michigan State should be right in the middle of the Big Ten race. 

Thus ends the lesson for today. I will be here all season to provide updated analysis on the Spartans' season and position in the Big Ten race. As always, enjoy, and stay tuned.