Dr. Green and White Sports Authority

In part one of this year's math-based preseason analysis of the college football season, we took a look back at the 2023 season. Through that analysis, we learned about the historical accuracy of preseason polls (plus-or-minus 25 positions) and regular season win totals (plus-or-minus 2.1 wins). We also explored the impact of changes in ability, schedule, and luck. Now it is now time to shift focus to the 2024 season. Over the years I have developed and refined a way to simulate the entire college football season using schedule information and preseason rankings as the only inputs. I will soon go through the full details of what I learned from this exercise.  For today, I will focus exclusively on what it says about the Michigan State Spartans. We will take a close look at the Spartans' schedule from three different points of view. Schedule Overview The best place to start this analysis is with the simulation's inputs. Figure 1 below summarizes the preseason rankings (which...

I have always been fascinated by the confluence of math and sports. Over the past several years, I have developed and refined a set of mathematical tools that I use to help me predict and better understand the worlds of college football and basketball. With the 2024 college football season just days away, it is time to once again open up the analytical tool box and see what we can learn. Before we delve into the upcoming season for the Michigan State Spartans and beyond, reviewing the results of the past season is a valuable exercise. General Lessons from the Past In the summer months leading up to the college football season, fans and sports analysts have limited information, and yet predictions abound regarding rankings, win totals, conference champions, and playoff participants. But how accurate are these predictions, historically? I have written extensively on this topic elsewhere. The simple answer is that on average, the experts do a good job, but there is also a significant amou...

Michigan State co-special teams coordinator/rush ends coach Chad Wilt has held a lot of titles over his more than 20-year coaching career.  In the early 2000s, Wilt was the defensive line coach/special teams coordinator during his tenures at Central Connecticut State, Liberty and Virginia. In the 2010s, Wilt was the defensive line coach at Richmond, Ball State, Maryland, Army, Cincinnati, and Minnesota. Most recently, Wilt was the co-defensive coordinator/linebackers coach at Indiana. Through all of these stops and titles, however, Coach Wilt views that his job has always been fundamentally the same. At his core, Wilt views himself as an educator of young men. "Coaches are just teachers nowadays," Wilt said to members of the media this week. "We're just looking for unique ways to teach...  Our meeting rooms, they are all just classrooms. Let's teach. Let's be interactive. Let's show things." As Wilt went into more detail about this teaching philosoph...

For as long as I can remember, I have loved the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I love the bracket. I love the underdogs. I love One Shining Moment. I even love the CBS theme music. As a kid I filled out hand-drawn brackets and scoured the morning newspaper for results of late night games. As I got older, I started tracking scores using a increasing complex set of spreadsheets. Over time, as my analysis became more sophisticated, I began to notice certain patterns to the Madness I have found that I can use modern analytics and computational tools to gain a better understanding of the tournament itself and perhaps even extract some hints as to how the tournament might play out. Last year, I used this analysis to correctly predict that No. 4 seed UConn win the National Title in addition to other notable upsets. There is no foolproof way to dominate your office pool, but it is possible to spot upsets that are more likely than others and teams that are likely to go on a run or flame out early....

Michigan State basketball fans had very high expectations coming into the 2023-24 season. After a surprising run to the Sweet 16 last March with most of the roster coming back, and with members of a top recruiting coming to East Lansing over the summer, the Spartans' lofty preseason ranking seemed completely justified. But starting in the opening game dress rehearsal against James Madison, it was clear that something was a bit "off" about this year's Spartan squad. As the loses accumulated in the non-conference, the overall production looked less like a show that was ready for Broadway and more like a small-town community theatre farce The second act of the season looked more promising. Following the win at Michigan, the Spartans looked poised to finish strong and challenge for maybe even top five seed in the NCAA Tournament. But as the final curtain of regular season drew near, the Spartans tripped and flubbed their lines yet again, losing four of the last five games...

In less than 48 hours, the 2023-24 Big Ten regular season will come to a close. In the mean time, there are still seven games left to play, which corresponds to 128 possible endings and 94 unique Big Ten Tournament brackets. For the Michigan State Spartans, the seeding scenarios are very straight forward. If the Spartans can win on the road against the Indiana Hoosiers on Sunday afternoon, Michigan State will earn the No. 6 or No. 7 seed depending on the result of the Iowa/Illinois game that will be played later on Sunday evening. An Illinois victory would result in the No. 6 seed for the Spartans, while an Iowa victory would give the Green and White the No. 7 seed. If the Spartans cannot get the win in Bloomington, Michigan State drops to the No. 8 seed in the Big Ten Tournament. In general, the better the seed, the better the chances that the Spartans will have to win more games in the tournament and thus improve their seed in the NCAA Tournament. Based on the range of Michigan State...