Michigan State Odds Update for Jan. 25, 2026

It was a very eventful week of Big Ten basketball. The Michigan State Spartans were able to complete the west coast swing with a sweep of Washington and Oregon. On Saturday, MSU shook off any hint of jetlag and demolished the Maryland Terrapins at the Breslin Center.

Elsewhere in the Big Ten, Nebraska, Michigan, and Illinois all picked up two additional wins. But it was a tough week for Purdue. The Boilermakers lost in the final minute at UCLA and then were upset at home on Saturday by the Fighting Illini.

As a result, Table 1 below gives the updated Big Ten enhanced standings through Saturday, Jan. 24.

Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings through Jan. 24, 2026.

The Cornhuskers sit alone at the top of the standings with a perfect 9-0 record, an impressive road win/home loss score of +5, and a strength of resume of +4.46 wins better than expected for an average power four team playing the Huskers' conference schedule to date.

Michigan State, Illinois, and Michigan are tied for second place at 8-1. Purdue has slid back to fourth place at 7-2. The Boilermakers are a half game ahead of Wisconsin pending Sunday's game between the Badgers and USC in Madison.

The updated Big Ten wins matrix is shown below in Table 2.

Table 2: Updated Big Ten expected wins and win distribution matrix. as of Jan. 25, 2026

Nebraska has taken over first place in expected wins (16.63), despite being the fifth ranked Big Ten team in overall Kenpom efficiency margin. Michigan (16.30) and Illinois (16.24) are less than a half game behind the Cornhuskers.

Michigan State (15.67) has moved up to fourth place and is about a game behind Nebraska. Purdue (14.60) has dropped to fifth place about one game behind MSU. There then continues to be over a 2.5-game gap before the sixth place team: Wisconsin.

The Spartans now have a 29% chance to finish the regular season with a conference record of at least 17-3. The odds to finish at exactly 16-4 are 28%. The odds for 15-5 are 24%, and the odds for 14-6 or worse are 20%.

MSU is now trending as the No. 3 or No. 4 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. There is a 73% chance that the Spartans earn the triple bye and will start tournament play on Friday. The is a 27% chance that Michigan State will have to start on Thursday and there is only a 1-in-700 chance that MSU falls below the No. 8 seed.

Updated Odds to Win/Share the Conference Crown

The updated odds to win or share a portion of the Big Ten title are shown below in Table 3.

Table 3: Updated odds to win at least a share of the 2026 Big Ten regular season title as of Jan. 25, 2026.

As expected from the data in Table 2, Nebraska is now the favorite to win the Big Ten with odds of 45%. Michigan (36.5%) and Illinois (33.5%) are in a close race for second place while the Spartans' odds are up to 21%.

Purdue now only has a 7% chance to grab at least a share of the regular season title. But beyond the Boilermakers, the odds drop to less than 1-in-500. It remains a five-team race.

Right now, a record of 18-2 or better is most likely going to be necessary to hang a regular season conference banner. Those odds are 61%. There is a 34% chance that the eventual Big Ten champion(s) will have a final record of 17-3. There is only a 5% chance that 16-4 or worse will get the job done.

At this point I also should mention that I caught an error in my spreadsheet this weekend. The Big Ten odds that I was previously reporting were actually the odds to get the No. 1 seed in the Big Ten Tournament and not the odds to share the title. That error has been corrected and the odds above in Table 3 are correct.

The fact that Nebraska is now officially the favorite to win the Big Ten has a lot to do with the Huskers one-game lead in the standings. However, the fact also remains that the Nebraska would still likely be a narrow underdog on the road to all four of the other contenders.

The Cornhusker's advantage also has to do with the strength of their remaining schedule, which is shown below in context with the rest of the conference in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Updated Big Ten strengths of schedule for the remaining conference games.

Of the contenders, Nebraska has the easiest remaining schedule. An average reference team would be expected to win 5.70 of the Huskers' remaining 11 conference games. Illinois (5.62) is less than a tenth of a game behind Nebraska.

But the other three contenders have quantitatively the three toughest remaining schedules. The reference team would be expected to win just 5.17 games playing MSU's remaining schedule and 5.09 games playing Purdue's remaining schedule. 

Michigan has, by far, the toughest remaining schedule (4.69). The Wolverines' remaining slate is a full game tougher that Nebraska's schedule and almost a half game tougher than the Spartans' schedule.

Impact of Nebraska at Michigan on Jan. 27

With this in mind, Tuesday's nights game featuring Nebraska at Michigan has enormous implications for the Big Ten race. Kenpom data suggests that the Wolverines will be around an 8.5-point favorite in that game, which translates into about an 80% chance of a win by Michigan.

Figure 2 below shows the projected impact on Big Ten odds depending on the results of that game.

Figure 2: Projected impact of the result of the Nebraska at Michigan game on the odds for each contender to win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title.

A win from the Wolverines would force a four-way tie for first place in the Big Ten standings. Michigan would be expected to reclaim the lead in my calculated odds due to the Wolverines' No. 2 overall ranking in Kenpom. Nebraska would still have the second-best odds, and the odds for Illinois and Michigan State would tick up just slightly.

But if Nebraska were to upset Michigan, my calculations suggest that the Cornhuskers' title odds would skyrocket up to 70% while the Wolverines' odds would plumet to 13%. The odds for Illinois and Michigan State would both drop by about four percentage points in this scenario.

Like it or not, it is quantitatively better for the Spartans if the Wolverines beat Nebraska on Tuesday night. A win by Nebraska will make the Cornhuskers more difficult to catch.

What if...

However, this analysis carries with it the assumption that the season-long Kenpom efficiency data are a true reflection of the strength of each team. On Kenpom's website, it is also possible to extract the uncorrected efficiency data for just Big Ten play. Figure 3 below summarizes these data.

Figure 3: Raw Kenpom efficiency margins for Big Ten play only as of Jan. 24, 2026.

Based on this analysis, Michigan State has been the most impressive team through the first nine games of Big Ten conference play. Nebraska and Michigan are a somewhat distant second and third place. Illinois and Purdue are ranked No. 4 and No. 5 based on this data set.

Similar to the overall Kenpom rankings, there is a sizable gap between Purdue and the next batch of five teams: Indiana, Iowa, Wisconsin, UCLA, and Ohio State. There is then another large gap before the final group of eight teams.

It is possible to run an additional series of simulations to see how the odds would be affected if the efficiency values in Figure 3 are a more accurate set of metrics to describe the current strength of each team. 

Figure 4 below gives the results of these simulations, including the odds for both of the possible results of the Nebraska at Michigan game.

Figure 4: Projected impact of the result of the Nebraska at Michigan game on the odds for each contender to win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title assuming the Big Ten only efficiencies are an accurate representation of each team's current strength.

In this scenario, Nebraska (79%) already has a commanding lead in title odds with Michigan State (37%) in distant second place. Michigan (9%) and Illinois (8%) are long shots and Purdue is essentially out of the race completely.

Furthermore, a win by Nebraska in Ann Arbor, which in this scenario is significantly more likely, would push the Huskers odds to win at least a share of the title to over 90% while MSU's odds would drop back to just 23%. Illinois (5%) would still be on life support while Michigan would also be effectively eliminated.

In this universe, a win by the Wolverines would push the Spartans' odds to almost 50%. However, Nebraska would remain the favorite (71%).

It is likely that the true nature of the Big Ten race lies somewhere in between. The Spartans are still very much in the hunt to repeat as Big Ten Champions, and right now Nebraska has emerged as the biggest threat.

Update on MSU's Position Nationally

No matter how the Big Ten race resolves, the Spartans are 18-2 which equals the start last year and is tied with the starts in 2001 and 2019. Michigan State is projected to be about a 16-point favorite on the road at Rutgers on Tuesday night. A 19-2 start would tie the 2008 and 2014 teams with the best starts of the Izzo era.

No Izzo team has ever started with a 20-2 record. In fact, no Michigan State team in history has started 20-2. The Spartans will very likely have a chance to break that record with a win over Michigan at home on Friday night.

The 2025-26 team is currently on track to be one of the best teams in Michigan State history. Figure 5 below highlights where the current Spartan team is performing relative to the rest of the country as well as past NCAA Champions and past Izzo teams.

Figure 5: Kenpon efficiency scatter plot as of Jan. 25, 2026.

As of Sunday morning, Michigan State is currently ranked No. 6 overall in Kenpom. The Spartans own the best defense in the country and their offensive efficiency has climbed to No. 48 nationally. Note that 20 of the past 23 NCAA Champions were ranked in the top six of Kenpom on Selection Sunday.

As Figure 5 shows, MSU is one of eight teams with profiles consistent with past NCAA Champions. The Spartans' current profile is similar to that of the 1999, 2001, and 2019 teams, all of which made it to a Final Four.

Arizona and Michigan have the two overall best Kenpom efficiencies, but as discussed above, Michigan might not be as good now as the Wolverines appeared to be back in December. No. 3 Duke and No. 10 UConn are also both contenders. Michigan State already faced both team this year and was competitive in both games.

The remaining contenders are all clustered in the "good offense but weaker defense" part of the graph. A few other notable teams such as No. 4 Illinois, No. 8 Purdue, and No. 13 Vanderbilt fall outside of the contender zone due to defense which is not up to par with the other contenders.