(Note: I meant post this yesterday, but I forgot. So, the games that took place on 1/27 are not reflected in the data below)

It has now been 19 days since the Michigan State Spartans took the court. While Michigan State’s position in the standings has not changed, there has certainly been a lot of action elsewhere in the Big Ten. With everything seemingly on track for the Spartans to return to action on Thursday night at Rutgers, it is once again time to check the overall status of the Big Ten race.

Current Standings and Odds Update

As usual, here are the updated enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 27, 2021.

Table 1: Updated enhanced Big Ten standings as of 01/27/2021


The big change since the last update was that Iowa had a miserable second half against Indiana last week, resulting in the second conference loss of the season for the Hawkeyes. Meanwhile, the Michigan Wolverines picked up another win or two and now have a game-and-a-half lead in the standings.

It is also notable that Michigan now also leads the conference in the plus/minus rating, which is the total number of road wins minus the number of home losses. That said, Michigan also continues to have a lead in the “luck” metric relative to the other major contenders. The luck metric is summarized below in Figure 2 for all Big Ten teams.


Figure 1: Summary of the luck metric for all Big Ten teams as of 01/26/2021

Despite losing to Michigan this week, Purdue remains the “luckiest” Big Ten team. The Boilermakers’ win total is a full game-and-a-half higher than expected based on their Kenpom efficiency rating. It is also notable that while Michigan is also quite lucky, the other main contenders (Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio State) are all unlucky or neutral at best. The Spartans remain the least lucky team in the conference.

Table 2 below gives the updated Big Ten win matrix.

Table 2: Big Ten win distribution matrix as of 01/27/2021, assuming all postponed games are made up.


This table now comes with the huge caveat that is assumes all postponed games will eventually be made up, which seems increasingly unlikely. That said, the Big Ten race is now showing a bit more separation at the top, with Michigan projected with over a 1.5 game advantage in expected wins over second-place Iowa, who in turn has a one-game advantage over third-place Illinois.

Third place overall is suddenly rather competitive as Illinois, Wisconsin, Purdue, and Ohio State are all within one game of each other in expected value. As for Michigan State, the Spartans’ expected win total of 7.4 has now dropped to MSU to 12th place overall.

Table 3 below shows the updated odds for the Big Ten regular season crown, once again assuming that all games are eventually played.

Table 3: Odds for each team to win or share the Big Ten regular season title, as of 01/26/2021


As usual, the Big Ten odds mirror the expected win totals shown in Table 2. Specifically, the results of the past week have pushed Michigan’s title odds up to 75 percent, while Iowa is hanging back in second place at 28 percent. No other team currently has odds over 10 percent. As for MSU, the odds to somehow make it back to first place sit at 1-in-4,000.

Currently, the most likely final record of the eventual Big Ten champion(s) is 16-4. That said, there is now almost a 40 percent chance that 17-3 (assuming all games are played) would be needed to hang a banner.

Strength of Schedule Update

Figure 2 below gives the updated overall strengths of schedule for all 14 Big Ten schools.


Figure 2: Updated Big Ten strengths of schedule as of 01/26/2021

Illinois retains the easiest overall Big Ten schedule, with Michigan close behind. Michigan State’s schedule is still the fifth most difficult in the league, 0.75 wins harder than Illinois’ and Michigan’s schedules.

Figure 3 below shows the strength of each teams’ remaining schedule, normalized to a percentage by the number of remaining games for each team.


Figure 3: Relative strengths of remaining schedules as of 01/27/2021

Purdue and Maryland now can claim the easiest remaining conference path, which is a big reason why Purdue and Maryland’s expected win totals are relatively high, based on each team’s current Kenpom ranking. Unfortunately, MSU’s remaining schedule is the second hardest overall, with only Indiana having a slightly tougher road.

Big Ten Tournament Projection

If the season ended today, that would be weird, because only 60 total Big Ten games have been played (43 percent of the season) and the teams have not played the same number of games. That said, it is possible to make projections about the Big Ten tournament based on the simulated results. Table 4 below provides that update.

Table 4: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds as of 01/27/2021


For a several weeks now, the top four projected seeds in the Big Ten Tournament have held steady with Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, and Wisconsin in the top four spots, although the order has fluctuated significantly. From a probability point of view, these are still the top four teams.

However, in the single case of highest probability where all of the favorite teams win, there is actually a three-way tie between Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio State. In this scenario, the Buckeyes win the tie-breaker to earn the No. 3 seed, while the Illini drop to the No. 5 seed.

As for MSU, the Spartans have dropped below Penn State and now sit at No. 12 overall in seeding odds. If all the favorites win, MSU drops below Northwestern to the No. 13 seed. As I stated in my previous analysis of MSU’s NCAA Tournament odds, I think that a key will be to finish with at least the No. 10 seed. Right now, those odds project at only 37 percent.

Another way to look at this is that for Michigan State to finish with at least the No. 10 seed, there are four other teams that MSU needs to beat out. The Spartans still have a clear Kenpom edge over Northwestern and Nebraska. Based on Table 4, Penn State is the next most likely team to beat out. But, MSU would need to pass at least one more team.

Based on the Big Ten Tournament seeding matrix in Table 4, Rutgers is now the most likely next team for MSU to pass. If the Spartans can beat Rutgers this week, that would obviously help a lot. But, as both Table 4 and Table 2 suggest, both Indiana and Maryland are possibilities and Minnesota could also fall into the bottom four. If one of those teams were to hit a late season slump, MSU might benefit.

Michigan State’s Current Position and Upcoming Schedule

Michigan State has not played a game since the last update, but I have updated the Kenpom scatter plot to show the current position of the Spartans relative to past MSU teams, previous champions, and the current field of national contenders.


Figure 4: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of 01/26/2021

MSU continues to fall outside of the blue “championship zone.” In addition, as we approach Selection Sunday, the green oval which defines the uncertainty in MSU’s likely final efficiency metrics continues to shrink. That said, this oval was derived assuming a normal schedule where the Spartans would have played around 20 games by now instead of just 12. Either way, the window of opportunity for this team to show improvement is starting to close.

Finally, Figure 5 below summarizes the projected odds for MSU in all of the remaining conference games. This time, I have pushed all of the postponed games to the end of the schedule, in an attempt to keep things tidy. In addition, I have adjusted the schedule to reflect the new date for the game at Iowa and the adjusted date of the Nebraska game.


Figure 5: Projected odds for MSU's remaining games.

I have also added one additional piece of information to the Figure, which is the current “quad” of each game, based on the newish NET ranking system used by the selection committee.

Basically, each game that a team plays is assigned to one of four groups depending on the estimated difficulty of each game. The difficulty is adjusted for the location. Specifically, a “quad one” game would be any home game against a team ranked in the NET top 30. If the game is played at a neutral site, the opponent only has to be in the top 50. For road games, the opponent only has to be in the top 75 to be in “quad one.” A similar sliding scale is used for quad two, three, and four games.

The selection committee will use a team’s record against quad one opponents in both the selection of at-large teams and in seeding. So far, MSU has only played two “quad one” games: versus Wisconsin and at Minnesota. MSU lost both of those games. However, 11 of MSU’s remaining 14 games are currently categorized as “Q1” games.

On first glance, this may seem daunting, as Figure 5 also suggests that Michigan State will only be favored in two of the remaining games. But, the good news is that MSU has a large number of chances to pick up high quality wins. Even in the Spartans were to only finish at 8-12, MSU would need to pick up at least three Q1 wins, which would be helpful in the eyes of the selection committee.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I am glad that we will finally be able to watch Michigan State play against on Thursday night. Hopefully, the team will emerge from its three-week long COVID “vacation” rested and focused. Hopefully the way that the Purdue game ended left them with a bad taste in its mouth that will fuel a level of preparation and effort that will carry them into February and allow them to take their game to the next level.

If MSU instead shows a lot of rust and drops another game, it could be a rough couple of week. As for me, I remain as always, optimistic. That is all for now, until next time, enjoy and Go State, beat Rutgers!

I profiled a name in the assistant coaching candidate speculation derby in this article that hasn't yet been mentioned (near the end of the story):


That being said, things continue to be very, very quiet about MSU's search. If Clink is involved, he is keeping it a lot quieter than he has in the past.

As the COVID-19 related pause continues for the Michigan State University basketball team, I have continued to think about and look forward to March Madness. Last week, I shared the results of an analysis that demonstrated that the total number of teams does not make a big impact on the odds for the top teams to win the tournament.

However, it also occurred to me that there other ways in which the tournament could be modified which might impact the results. While we continue to wait for MSU basketball to resume, I decided to explore some of these other formats in more detail. As a refresher, I am using Kenpom efficiency margin data from Jan. 1, 2021 to both select and seed teams. I use the same data to generate odds for individual games which act as an input to a Monte Carlo simulation of the full tournament.

In my previous post, I looked at the impact of changing the size of the tournament from 16 teams up to 357 teams (all of Division I). In order to complete that story, I also simulated the results for even small tournaments of only eight, four, and two teams. The results of these simulations are shown below:


Figure 1: Impact of the size of the tournament on the odds that the highest ranked team wins

As expected, if the tournament is small enough, the odds that the top ranked team cuts down the nets does increase. If the “tournament” is simply a single game played by the two top rated teams at the end of the season (in this example, Gonzaga and Baylor) the result of that game is likely a near toss-up on a neutral floor and thus the highest ranked team’s odds are naturally slightly over 50 percent.

As the number of teams in the field expand, those odds fall to 36 percent (for a four-team field), 28 percent (for an eight-team field), and finally to around 23 percent for any tournament with 16 teams or more. As explained last time, the reason that these odds seem to level off is that while the top rated teams have to win more games, so do all of the other top teams. A bigger tournament tends to generate more upsets which makes the average path for any given team slightly easier.

Another interesting result that follows from this analysis is that it implies that the current 68-team format for the NCAA Tournament is close to ideal. In order to include all of the conference champions, the field must be larger than 32 teams. If the field were to expand to greater than 68 teams, it is clear that the odds for each individual team do not really change.

Furthermore, my math suggests that the odds for any at-large team ranked outside of the top-45 or so in Kenpom to win the tournament is only about one percent. It is very unlikely that any team that does not make the field in the current format would go all the way. So, there seems to be no compelling reason to expand the tournament any more than it is today, unless there are extenuating circumstances...such as a global pandemic. More on that later.

Other Tournament Formats

The impact of the size of a standard single elimination tournament is now clear. But, in the leagues such as the NBA, the “tournament” consists of several rounds where the teams face off in best-of-seven game series.

It is natural to assume that in a multi-game format, the favored team is more likely to win, as the result would mostly likely “regress to the mean” over a large sample size (number of games). In other words, the underdog is less likely to win a majority of the games due to random chance (such a cold or hot shooting night) as the total number of games increase.

I was able to use simple probabilities (the binomial expansion) to estimate the odds that the favored team wins a multiple game series based on the odds of the favored teaming winning an individual game. To keep things simple, I assumed that all games would be played on a neutral court. The results are shown below in Figure 2.


Figure 2: Change in the overall odds when moving from a single game to a multi-game format

The shape of this graph is essentially what one might expect to see. In all cases, the more games are played, the more likely that better team is projected to win the series. For near toss-ups, the effect is small, but it appears to increase as the gap between the teams grow.

Another way to visualize this data is to converter the odds to win both a single game and the series into an effective equivalent point spread. That data is shown below in Figure 3.


Figure 3: Effective single-game point spread equivalent for various multi-game series relative to the spread for a single game

As the figure shows, the relationship is essentially linear and there is a simple correlation between the point spreads for the single game and the equivalent point spread for a multi-game series. For example if the projected point spread for two teams on a neutral court is 10 points in a single game, the odds that the better team would win in a three-game series is the equivalent of winning a single game with a point spread than is 1.48 times bigger, or roughly 15 points.

In a five-game series, the difference is a factor of 1.86. So, it is like moving from a 10-point spread to an 18.5 point spread. In a seven-game series, the effect is just a bit larger than the odds of doubling the point spread.

By itself, this data is interesting, but perhaps not that useful. However, it does allow us to answer another interesting question: what would happen to the odds in the NCAA tournament if somehow there was enough time to make each round a multi-game series of three, five, or seven games? Of course, this is completely impractical, but what if it were possible?

In addition, we could envision a double elimination format for the NCAA tournament. For the sake of comparison, I simulated a 16-team tournament using both a double elimination structure as well as a best-of-three game structure and compared it to the standard single elimination format base case. That result is shown below in Figure 4.


Figure 4: Comparison of the odds of each team winning a 16-team tournaments with different formats

In this case, we can finally see a significant difference in the odds, and the primary beneficiaries are the top two teams. Moving from a single-elimination format to double elimination boosts the odds of the top two teams by about four percentage points.

If each round were instead a best-of-three series, the odds would be even better for the top teams. In this case, the No. 1 overall seem gets a boost of almost 10 percentage points while the No. 2 seed’s odds improve by around seven percentage points.

These boosts come at the expense of the weaker teams. For this data set, the No. 3 overall seed has essentially the same odds in all three scenarios, while the odds for the rest of the field go down in both the best-of-three and the double elimination scenario.

Though not shown in Figure 4, an additional simulation suggests that moving to a seven-game series in each round would push the odds for the No. 1 team up by an additional 10 percentage points to around 45 percent. In other words, an NBA-style best-of-seven tournament would very likely identify “the best” college team in the tournament. But, it would also likely temper much or all of the madness that we have come to expect and love.

The Full Monty

In the previous piece on this topic, I mentioned that the idea had been floated to expand the 2021 NCAA Tournament to include all eligible Division I programs. At first, I thought that this idea was a bit silly, but as COVID-19 related cancellations continue to mount, it seems less and less likely that the full 140-game Big Ten schedule is going to be completed. Other teams and conferences will have the same problem.

With unbalanced and abbreviated schedules, it is going to be much more difficult than usual to select the best 40 to 45 at-large teams this year. So, I am starting to see the logic in just letting everyone play. Perhaps for selfish reasons, this would also ensure that MSU’s current tournament streak remains intact.

But, a full roughly 350-team tournament would last a full nine rounds and the logistics are likely too difficult. But, with the release of the schedule of the NCAA tournament dates and venues this week, it occurred to me that there is a way to possibly run a full national tournament in 2021 with limited impact to the current schedule. This is how I would set it up:

• Cancel all conference tournaments. As all teams are new eligible, there is no reason to stage them.
• Give all of teams from the six power conferences (75 teams in the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12, Big East, SEC, and Pac-12) a first round bye as well as the top 21 non-power five teams, as selected by the committee. The total number of teams with a first round bye is 96.
• This leaves a total of about 250 teams from mid- and low-major conferences. These teams would play in a set of 32 regional tournament (like mid-major conference tournaments) of seven or eight teams each during the week of March 1 (when most mid-major conference tournaments take place). Each tournament is only three rounds and the 32 total winners would advance to the full tournament of 128 teams. This would require just one additional round compared to the current tournament.
• Now, perhaps the tournament can move to Indiana with the one additional round of 128 to be played during the time when the Big Ten tournament was scheduled to be played (March 11 to 14). This total of 64 games can be split over four days and the six or so venues already planed for use in the city of Indianapolis and the state of Indiana. Each team only plays once, so logistics are fairly simple for each team
• Now, we have 64 teams. Eliminate the First Four and continue with the existing schedule.

While it seems unlikely that the NCAA is going to move to this structure on short notice (the logistics are still likely a nightmare), I believe that it has a lot of fun merits. The regional pod play-in tournaments would likely have some regional rivals from different leagues squaring off. Think about a pod where Detroit Mercy and Oakland face off against Eastern Michigan Central Michigan, and Western Michigan, plus a couple of Indiana schools like Valparaiso and Purdue Fort Wayne. I would watch that.

Seeding of the tournament might get messy, but the NCAA could even decide to use a model similar to the NHL where teams are reseeded after the play-in round. In other word, the No. 1 overall seed would automatically be paired with the weakest champion of the regional pod round in the round of 128. If this round is also all played in the state of Indiana, it would be pretty simple to accomplish this.

As I showed in my previous analysis, there would likely be a higher number of upsets overall in the NCAA Tournament due to its larger size, but the top teams would have no worse odds to cut down the nets in early April. That seems like a win for fans, players, and coaches. I would certainly not want to move to this type of model on a regular basis, but for one year, after everything that we have gone through as a society, I think that it would be fun.

That does it for this time. We still have another week to wait for MSU to take the court once again. Hopefully this will be the final “pause” of the season for the Green and White. My fingers remain firmly crossed.

As we approach the end of January, a lot of college basketball discussion has turned to the NCAA Tournament. The question on everyone’s mind right now is whether the NCAA Tournament is going to happen at all this year. As for now, the plan remains in place to the play the entire tournament in the state of Indiana using (more or less) the normal schedule.

However, as COVID-based pauses and cancelled or postponed games continue to mount, it is harder and harder to believe that this plan is going to actually work. That said, I do believe that the NCAA Tournament will happen this year, in some form. Will it contain 68 teams and will it actually take place in March? Those points, I believe, are still unclear.

As for Michigan State fans, the big question is whether or not the Spartans are going to be a part of the Big Dance at all this year. Right now, in the midst of a now three-week pause, Michigan State seems to be squarely on the bubble. ESPN’s Joe Lunardi has MSU as one of the last teams in. In contrast, CBS’s Jerry Palm has MSU as one of the last team’s out.

A comprehensive list of bracket projections is compiled on the Bracket Project website. According the latest update, MSU appears in 37 of the 75 published brackets (49.3 percent). In total, this data all suggests the same thing: MSU is currently squarely on the bubble.

If things go to plan on Thursday, MSU will take the court once again at Rutgers. It is hard to say how the Spartans will look after almost three weeks off. Will the team be rested or rusty? We will all find out together. Either way, based on the current situation, if the Spartans can improve their play in their remaining games, MSU will likely make the tournament. If they do not, then they probably won’t.

But, as we approach Selection Sunday, what are some of the signs that MSU fans can look toward to judge if we will be able to breathe easy or if we will be biting our nails on Selection Sunday? One metric to look for I have already mentioned above: the data from the Bracket Project. In addition, I believe that there are three other factors that we can track for the remainder of the season.

Big Ten Record

In a normal year, it is pretty easy to look at team’s final record overall as well as the final conference record to decide if that team in going to make the NCAA Tournament or not. As a very general rule, a Power Five team with at least 20 wins and a .500 record in conference play is usually in good shape. In 2021, the total number of wins is essentially irrelevant, but the conference record will certainly be a factor.

In years when the Big Ten is considered strong (like this year) a .500 conference record is a virtual guarantee for an at-large bid. In other years this is sometimes not the case. For example, Nebraska went 13-5 in 2018 and still wound up in the NIT. However, just as recently as 2019, both Minnesota (9-11 in conference play) and Ohio State (8-12) made the Tournament with losing conference records.

Just to give a few non-Big Ten examples, in 2019 Oklahoma went 7-11 in Big 12 play and still made the Tournament as a No. 9 seed. In 2018, Texas and Oklahoma earned bids with 8-10 conference records. Kansas State did the same thing in 2017 with an 8-10 record. In 2015, Texas and Oklahoma State also made it in at 8-10. In each of those years, Kenpom had the Big 12 rated as the No. 1 overall conference.

With the Big Ten sitting in the No. 1 spot this year in Kenpom’s conference ranking, I would expect that any team that is within two games of .500 (or 8-12 with a full schedule) will get a serious look as a at-large bid. Michigan State needs to win about half of its remaining games to stay on this path. While my current calculations give MSU only a 13 percent chance to make it to 10-10, the odds to finish at at least 8-12 at at 46 percent right now.

I should also note that quality wins are certainly a factor, but I am not currently worried about this variable. MSU’s current NET rating is a concerning No. 84 and the Spartans’ “Quad One” record is at 0-3. However, by my count MSU has a total of 11 Quad One games left (including all seven road games and home games versus Michigan, Illinois, Ohio State, and Iowa). So, for the Spartans to even get close to .500, some high quality wins will have to come along for the ride.

Big Ten Tournament

If MSU continue to flirt with the bubble for the rest of the regular season, the Big Ten Tournament is likely to be viewed as a bit of a tie-breaker. Right now, most brackets have nine or 10 Big Ten teams in the field. While the seed in the Big Ten Tournament does not officially matter in NCAA Tournament selection, it does help with the optics. In this case, it would be a tremendous benefit for MSU to enter the Big Ten Tournament as at least the No. 10 seed.

First off, this would strengthen the idea in the eyes of the committee that Michigan State is, in fact, a top-10 Big Ten team. Furthermore, it would increase the odds that MSU would get at least one more quality win. One thing is certain, and that is that bubble teams who lose in the first game of a conference tournament seem to often not get the benefit of the doubt on Selection Sunday. MSU may very likely need to win at least one game to stay on the positive side of the bubble.

Right now, I project Michigan State’s odds to get at least the No. 10 seed in the conference tournament to be only at 37 percent. If the Spartans do wind up playing on the Wednesday of the conference tournament, I think that two wins at least will be needed in order to go dancing.

Kenpom Rankings

While the committee does not officially use Kenpom efficiency data to evaluate or seed teams, it does provide a rich set of data that can give us hints as to the likelihood that a team like MSU will either make the tournament or not. In this case, I have some hard numbers to share.

I went back through Kenpom data back to 2011 when the tournament expanded to the current 68-team format. I tracked the final, pre-tournament rankings and adjusted efficiency margins for all non-conference champions and correlated those numbers to the odds that a team would make the tournament or not as an at-large team. The results are shown below in Figures 1 and 2.


Figure 1: Odds that a non-champion will be an at-large NCAA Tournament participant as a function of Kenpom ranking


Figure 2: Odds that a non-champion will be an at-large NCAA Tournament participant as a function of adjusted efficiency margin

The shape of the data in both Figures is essentially the same and tells the same basic story. Good teams, with a Kenpom ranking of at least 25 and an adjusted efficiency margin of at least 18.0, almost always make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team.

As the the overall ranking and efficiency margin drops, the odds that a team is an at-large selection also drops linearly. Once the adjusted efficiency margin drops to 10.0 and the ranking drops below 70, the odds approach zero.

In both figures, I included Michigan State’s current position, which is a No. 44 ranking and an adjusted efficiency margin of 16.3. In this case, the Kenpom data paints a slightly happier picture. Based on MSU’s ranking, the odds to make the tournament are 58 percent. If we instead only focus on the raw adjusted efficiency data, the odds climb to 74 percent.

I would argue that the reason the Kenpom data is more optimistic has to do with the fact that MSU has been a bit unlucky so far in Big Ten play. If the Kenpom efficiency data is a true estimate of how “good” MSU really is, the Spartans really should be 3-3 right now and not 2-4. If it weren’t for about 20 seconds of bad luck and bad execution against the Purdue Boilermakers, that is exactly where MSU would be right now.

In other words, Kenpom data suggest that the Spartans are likely to regress to the mean over the rest of the season and perhaps steal a win or two in the back half of the season. If this happens, then Michigan State will most likely find themselves on the positive side of the bubble on Selection Sunday, just as the data in Figures 1 and 2 suggest.

That is all for today. I will provide a new odds update on the full Big Ten picture prior to Michigan State’s game (fingers crossed) on Thursday at Rutgers. Going forward, I am planning to revisit the metrics discussed above as MSU plays more games and as Selection Sunday approaches (also, fingers crossed).

Until next time, enjoy, and Go State, beat Rutgers!

Streaming on BTN+ at 4 pm.

Really almost a must win - need to get out of this funk.

Neil's Notebook: https://msuspartans.com/news/2021/1...tebook-spartans-host-osu-at-midway-point.aspx

Time to climb up the standings this weekend - with 6th place OSU in town.

MSU is 4-17-1 v. OSU in the last 5 years (1-1 this year).

Wisconsin and Michigan won last night (Wisconsin at PSU, UM at ND).

PSU is winning tonight 4-1 after 2. UM-ND are currently tied at 1 in South Bend.

Minnesota uh... they won 10-0 yesterday and 10-4 today against Arizona State.

Tomorrow's game at 4 pm on the BTN - it's also streamed on line on Fox Sports.

Sunday, also at 4, is streaming only on BTN+

What the hell are they doing?

Looked like they were +2 guys on that change. Obvious penalty.

Tied at 1-1, but shots are almost 3-1 for OSU. Not good.

!

I noticed, and maybe this happened awhile ago but...

The Wisconsin series in Madison will be on Fox Sports Detroit (Friday) & Fox Sports Plus (Saturday) at the end of the month. As well as the 2nd game in February at Minnesota.

Don't see any more BTN yet. This weekend is on-line only, BTN+.

It looks like this was just released today:


Here is the summary:

• First Four (March 18th, Thursday... not the usual Tues/Wed) at Purdue and IU (Mackey Arena and Assembly Hall)
• 1st Round (3/19 and 3/20, Friday and Saturday... shifted by one day) at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indiana Farmers Coliseum, Lucas Oil Stadium, Mackey Arena, and Assembly Hall.
• 2nd Round (3/21 and 3/22, Sunday and Monday) just at Bankers Life Fieldhouse, Hinkle Fieldhouse, Indiana Farmers Coliseum and Lucas Oil Stadium.
• Sweet 16 (3/27 and 3/28, Saturday and Sunday... shifted by 2 days) at Bankers Life Fieldhouse and Hinkle Fieldhouse.
• Regional Finals (3/29 and 3/30, Monday and Tuesday) at Lucas Oil Stadium.
• Final Four (4/3 and 4/5, Saturday and Monday... as usual) at Lucas Oil Stadium.

There are strong perceptions that Michigan State is the team to beat for 2022 in-state WR Tyrell Henry. I chatted with Henry this week about his interest in the Spartans, and he also details his current decision timeframe. That article can be found below:

The last time we checked on the current status of the Big Ten race and Michigan State’s season, the Spartans were coming off a heart-breaking last second loss to Purdue 11 days ago. Based on the original schedule, Michigan State should have played two games since that loss, at Iowa and versus Indiana at home. But, a COVID-19 outbreak in the Spartan locker room has forced the team to hit the pause button for now. The next scheduled game at home versus Illinois has also now been postponed.

At this point, there are still a lot of questions. Will those three missed games actually get made up? For now, all the talk seems to be that they will, but with nine total Big Ten games already postponed and with Nebraska also headed for a pause, the odds that all 140 conference games will be played before the Big Ten Tournament seems vanishingly small.

Once the MSU pause is over, what will the Spartans actually look like? Having a few days off to rest and practice might be a good thing for the Green and White. Tom Izzo is a legend due to his ability to tinker and tighten screws and find the right mix to get the maximum out of his teams. It doesn’t always work (for example in 2011), but his success rate is far better than his failure rate. It is certainly possible that this team emerges from the pause looking a lot more like the top-five national title contender that we thought that we had back in early December.

But, on the other hand, 19 days off feels like an eternity, especially if players like Josh Langford are sick and the team has not actually been able to practice as a group. This is truly uncharted territory in so many ways that even Izzo’s playbook might not the answer. This team might simply be who they are right now and the pause might actually make things worse. We really don’t know and all we can do is wait.

While we wait, Big Ten action is still taking place and eight more conference games are now into the history books. Let’s go through the data and see where things stand.

Current Standings and Odds Update

As usual, here are the updated enhanced Big Ten standings as of 01/19/2021.

Table 1: Enhanced Big Ten standings as of 01/19/2021


Minnesota’s win over Michigan on Saturday means that every Big Ten team now has at least one conference loss, and Iowa has now moved into a first-place tie with the Wolverines. Wisconsin is a game back, while Illinois, Ohio State, and Purdue are two games back in the loss column. Iowa also moved to +3 in the “plus/minus” category (measuring road wins minus home loses) which gives the Hawkeyes a leg up in the Big Ten race.

Purdue has now also taken the lead in the “luck” category, with a score of +1.26 wins over their expected number of wins. Northwestern and Minnesota are also above a full win in the luck category. Michigan came back to earth a bit, but are still the fourth luckiest team in the conference. In contrast, MSU’s luck (-1.10) is still bad, but not as bad as Penn State’s (-1.24).

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

Table 2: Big Ten win distribution matrix for 01/19/2021


Iowa has now moved back into the top spot in the conference both in Kenpom’s ratings and in expected wins with almost a full game lead on the Wolverines. Wisconsin and Illinois are fading a bit at between 12 and 13 expected wins, while Purdue, Ohio State, and Minnesota round out the top-seven. MSU’s expected win total of 7.65 with a 17 percent chance to finish at 10-10 or better is essentially unchanged since the last update.

The updated Big Ten regular season odds, based as always on 500,000 Monte Carlo simulations of the season, including the constantly shrinking estimation of uncertainty, is shown below in Table 3.

Table 3: Odds to win or share the Big Ten regular season title.


As usual, the odds tend to mirror the expected win totals shown above in Table 2. Iowa now projects to have a 63 percent chance to win or share the Big Ten title, with Michigan in second place at 36 percent. The rest of the league is also seeing some stratification with Wisconsin’s odds at 13 percent, Illinois at seven percent, Ohio State and Purdue at close to three percent, and Minnesota at just one percent. MSU’s odds continue to be terrible (one in 2,600) but greater than Nebraska’s odds of zero. More specifically, the Huskers did not win the Big Ten in any of the 500,000 simulations.

Right now, it is still looking likely that the eventual Big Ten Champion will finish with a record of 16-4 or better (75 percent chance) but the odds for a 17-3 champion are approaching 50 percent. This all assumes that all Big Ten teams will still play the full 20-game schedule.

Strength of Schedule Update

Figure 1 below gives the updated overall strengths of schedule for all 14 Big Ten schools.


Figure 1: Big Ten strengths of schedule as of 01/19/2021

Once again there is not a lot of change here, but Purdue’s overall weak schedule seems to be the main story. It seems likely that the Boilermakers may wind up with a slightly better record and Big Ten Tournament seed than they perhaps deserve, based mostly on this factor. Also, I am keeping an eye on Maryland, as the Terrapins might wind up fighting MSU for the No. 10 seed in the Big Ten Tournament, which could wind up being a de facto dividing line between making the Big Dance or not.

Figure 2 below shows the strengths of schedule just for the remaining games in conference play.


Figure 2: Big Ten strengths of schedule for just the remaining games, normalized to a win percentage

Minnesota has now moved into the top spot with the easiest remaining schedule. Purdue and Maryland are not far behind. Ohio State, Michigan State, and Indiana all have very challenging remaining schedules relative to the rest of the league.

Big Ten Tournament Projection

If the season ended today, that would be weird, because only 49 total Big Ten games have been played (35 percent of the season) and the teams have not played the same number of games. That said, it is possible to make projections about the Big Ten tournament based on the simulated results. Table 4 below provides that update.

Table 4: Big Ten Tournament seeding odds as of 01/19/2021


The top four teams in the conference are stable and have achieved some level of separation from the rest of the pack. The next three teams (Purdue, Ohio State, and Minnesota) are in a bit of jumble for the No. 5 to No. 7 seeds. The next batch of teams (Rutgers, Indiana, and Maryland) are in a similar jumble for the No. 8 to No. 10 seeds.

Right now, MSU projects as the No. 11 seed, which I believe would be a problem for NCAA Tournament purposes if this position holds. That said, my math still suggests a 46 percent chance that the Spartans can avoid playing in the initial Wednesday round of the Big Ten Tournament. If MSU can improve in a manner similar to most Coach Izzo teams, then I suspect that this position will improve as March approaches.

MSU’s Current Position and Upcoming Schedule

MSU has not played a game since the last update, but I have updated the Kenpom scatter plot to show the current position of MSU relative to past MSU teams, previous champions, and the current field of national contenders.


Figure 3: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot as of 01/19/2021

The Spartans’ current position did change slightly as more data was collected and the efficiency metrics were adjusted based on the strengths of MSU’s opponents. But, the bottom line is that MSU continues to hover outside of the blue “contender zone” and in the region of the graph where other underachieving MSU teams have finished (such as the 2011 and 2017 teams).

I should also note that the total number of other teams entering the “contender zone” has increased significantly, as has the total efficiency margins of several teams. I now count a total of 22 teams in the contender zone. The most notable team not currently in the contender zone is Iowa...because “defense.”

Baylor and Gonzaga continue to look very strong with metrics as good as some of Tom Izzo’s best teams (notably the 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2019 teams). However, before you pre-populate your office pool bracket with the Bears and the Zags in the Final Four, I will note that both historical precedent and simulation results suggest that there is only about a 20 to 25 percent chance that both of the top two rated teams will survive until the final weekend.

As for MSU’s remaining schedule with projected odds, that update is shown here:


Figure 4: Projected odds for MSU's remaining games as of 01/19/2021

For simplicity, I have kept the Iowa, Indiana, and Illinois games on their originally scheduled dates with the assumption that these games will get played eventually. The main change from last time is that the postponed game with Indiana just moved once again over the 50 percent line and into the category of games where MSU is likely to be favored.

As for now, MSU projects to be favored in just three remaining games and has odds of over 35 percent in six additional games. If the Spartans can win all nine of those games, it would bring the final record up to 11-9. At this point, we should all consider that an accomplishment. Of course, if some of MSU’s more winnable games wind up not being rescheduled, that could also cause problems with MSU potentially earning enough wins to play in the Big Dance.

As for that list of “winnable” remaining games with projected odds over 35 percent, the next game up at Rutgers, on Jan. 28, now falls squarely in that category. At that point, MSU would have not played a game in almost three weeks. It is hard imagine what the Spartans are going to look like after such as long layoff. It could be good, and it also could be quite bad. Only time will tell.

That is all for now. Until next time, enjoy, wash your hand, wear you mask, and practice social distancing. Go State, Beat COVID-19...I mean Rutgers. Actually, let’s just go ahead and beat both, shall we?

PSU leading 2-1 in the second.

But I lost my Big Ten Plus feed.

Completely went out on me.

I'm able to get onto the Michigan State wrestling feed for today and Michigan State swimming, but the hockey feed completely shut down on me.

Anyone else out there watching on Big Ten Plus whose feed ended for them in the second period?

With the Michigan State basketball season on a (hopefully) short pause due to COVID-19, I have been thinking a lot about the NCAA Tournament. One topic, of course, is whether MSU will actually be playing in said tournament in March. For today, I will give a simple answer to that question: if the Spartans start playing better and can approach their potential soon, then yes, I think that they will make the tournament. If they do not, then they won’t.

As for today, I have some thoughts related to the structure of the actual tournament itself. As most sports fans know, the current NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament consists of 68 total teams, 32 of which are conference champion automatic qualifiers and 36 of which are “at-large” teams selected by the Selection Committee.

However, the tournament has not always been the same size that it is today. The current structure has only been in place since 2011. From 2001 to 2010, the tournament consisted of only 65 teams, which was an increase from the much more mathematically pleasing number of 64 teams from 1985 to 2000.

From 1980 to 1985, the Tournament field grew from 48 teams and then to 52 teams in 1983 and 53 teams in 1984. When Magic Johnson cut down the nets for the Spartans in 1979, the tournament had just instituted seeding and had expanded from 32 to 40 teams. Back in 1951, the tournament consisted of only 16 teams. The number fluctuated between 22 and 25 teams throughout the 1950s through the mid 1970s.

As we think about the upcoming 2021 Tournament, the current plan is to go forward with current 68 team format. However, some coaches or media members have suggested that the NCAA could consider tournaments of different sizes. ESPN’s bracketology expert, Joe Lunardi, has been tinkering with both a 16-team and a 48-team bracket. In addition, Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski proposed back in September that all Division 1 teams should make the NCAA tournament in 2021.

These discussions caused me to ask the following question:

What impact would changing the size of the NCAA tournament make on the eventual result?

I decided to dip into my bag of mathematical tricks in an attempt to answer this question.

Methodology

The first step was to define a set of tournaments of different sizes and make-ups that could be compared on an apple-to-apples basis. In order to make the selection and seeding of teams straightforward, I used Ken Pomeroy’s rankings as of Jan. 1, 2021 to define both the best team in each conference (to define the teams earning an automatic bid) as well as the “best” at-large teams and the seeding, from the No. 1 overall seed to the lowest seeded team.

I settled on six total single-elimination formats to examine, which are summarized below:

16-Team Tournament

In this case, I envision a process where the champion of each of the six high-major conferences (ACC, Big 12, Big Ten, Big East, SEC, and Pac-12) gets an automatic bid and the remaining 10 teams are the at-large bids which I selected using the highest ranked remaining teams in Kenpom. Since 16 is a factor of two, the Tournament consists of four even rounds with no byes or play-in games.

48-Team Tournament

Here, I gave the champion of all 32 conferences as automatic bids, which leaves only 16 additional bids for at large teams. In this case, the top 16 total teams (seeds No. 1 to No. 4) all receive a first round bye. The first round consists of 16 total games which reduces the field to an even 32 teams. From there, a total of five rounds are played to reduce the field to the champion.

68-Team Tournament

This is the current format of the NCAA Tournament. There are 32 automatic bids and 36 at-large bids. I also used the current First Four structure where the bottom four teams overall face off to become a pair of No. 16 seeds and the bottom four at-large teams face off to enter the Tournament as a No. 11 or No. 12 seed.

68-Team Tournament of Top Teams

I decided to explore a variation on the current format where there are no automatic bids and the tournament is comprised of just the top 68 ranked teams in Kenpom. I kept the same basic structure as the current tournament in which the bottom four teams as well as the teams ranked No. 43 to No. 47 overall play in the First Four.

128-Team Tournament

In this case, the number of at-large bids is greatly expanded to 96 teams. As 128 is also a factor of two, the tournament is easily structured in seven total rounds with no byes or play-in games.

357-Team Tournament

This is the full-monty-let-them-all-play version of the tournament where every team ranked by Kenpom gets into the Big Dance. The top 155 teams get a first round bye, while the bottom 202 teams face off in 101 first round games. This pares the field down to 256 teams, which is once again a factor of two. From there, eight rounds with no additional byes are needed to decide the champion.

When placing the teams into each bracket, no consideration was made for geography or potential rematches. I simply used the Kenpom rankings to define the “s-curve” where in all cases the strongest team is matched up against the weakest team remaining, if the favored teams all win.

In order to simulate the results of each tournament I used a standard Monte Carlo method. I used the Kenpom ratings for each team to generate a projected point spread and win probability. I then used a random number generator to select the winner of each game, all the way to the championship game. I simulated each tournament 50,000 times.

Does Size Matter?

The overall results of this series of simulations is shown below in Figure 1, which gives the odds for each of the top 16 teams in the country to win the National Championship in each of the six test cases mentioned above.


Figure 1: Odds for the top 16 teams in the country to win the national title in six different sized tournaments.

I did not bother to name any of the teams in Figure 1 because the actual identity of each team really does not matter. These teams are simply a representative group of teams with decreasing relative strength. The source data is simply a snapshot of how good that series of teams was on one specific day.

Just for reference, the top four seeds on that specific day were Gonzaga, Baylor, Villanova, and Wisconsin. The current top four is a little different now and the efficiency margins have also changed. As such, the raw percentages are not that important. The key point of Figure 1 is how the odds change as the size of the tournament changes.

The obvious take-home message is this: the size and structure of the tournament does not make a big difference in the odds of each team to win the tournament.

For the smaller (16-team and 48-team) tournaments, the stronger teams have slightly better odds than they do in the larger tournament. But, this difference is less than two percentage points (24.6 percent versus 23.3 percent) for the No. 1 overall seed and less for the weaker teams. As the tournament increases in size from 68 to 128 to 357 teams, the odds for each of the top 16 teams to cut down the nets does not change significantly

In general, I found this result to be rather surprising. I expected that a larger tournament field would inject significantly more chaos in the mix, resulting in a depression of the odds for the top teams. However, this is not the case. The next question to ask is: why?

What Is Going On?

In order to better understand this result, it is helpful to look in more detail at what is happening round-by-round in the different tournaments. From here out, I will focus on the No. 1 overall seed only, but the trends generally hold for all teams. Figure 2 below shows the odds for this team to advance past each round in five of the test case tournaments.


Figure 2: Odds for the No. 1 overall seed to advanced past each round for five of the test case tournaments.

As the tournament adds additional rounds, each team has more opportunities to lose. As Figure 2 shows, if the tournament were to be expanded to 128 or 357 teams, the No. 1 overall seed would suffer a noticeable number of upsets in the Round of 64, which is the starting point for the No. 1 overall seed in the current format.

In the current format, the No. 1 overall seed in this example would be expected to win in the Round of 64 about 99.6 percent of the time. If the tournament were to expand to 128 team, the win probability drops to 91 percent. If all Division 1 teams are invited, that probability drops to 89 percent.

The reason for this is due to the relative strength of the No. 1 overall seed’s opponent in each case. In the current 68-team format, a typical No. 16 seed would be an automatic qualifier ranked around No. 200 in Kenpom. When the one round is added (the 128-team tournament), the No. 1 overall team would face a team as strong as a typical No. 16 seed one round earlier in the Round of 128. In the Round of 64, the opponent would be stronger (around No. 64 in Kenpom) and thus the odds of an upset would increase.

In the case of the 357-team tournament, the opponent for the No. 1 overall seed in the Round of 64 would be roughly the same as in the 128-team tournament. But, the odds of advancing past this round are slightly lower due to a need to face a tougher opponent in the Round of 128 (because the weaker teams likely got knocked out of the tournament in the previous rounds).

However, as the tournament progress to the later rounds, the lines begin to converge. It appears that as the tournament size increases, the average opponent strength tends to decrease as the tournament moves into the later rounds.

In order to visualize this effect, it is helpful to plot the probability of the No. 1 overall seed to win each specific game in each round. This is essentially equivalent to estimating the average point spread that the No. 1 overall seed would face in each round. That data is summarized in Figure 3.


Figure 3: Average odds for the No. 1 overall seed to win each specific game in each round

Similar to the discussion above, the No. 1 overall seed has a very high probability to win the first game in the tournament where automatic bids are in play (larger than 16 teams). The probability then starts to drop.

The most interesting comparison is the one between the 68-team tournament and the two larger tournaments from the Round of 32 on. At this point in the tournament, the weaker automatic bid teams have generally been eliminated and it is easier to compare the tournaments to each other directly.

For the standard 64-team tournament, the No. 1 overall seed will face either a No. 8 or a No. 9 seed in the Round of 32. In the larger tournaments, the s-curve would place the same two teams on the path to face that No. 1 overall seed, but those No. 8 and No. 9 seeds would first need to win a game or two to get there. If one or both of those teams gets upset in a prior round, the path for the No. 1 overall seed gets slightly easier, which is why the odds for the No. 1 overall seed to advance go up slightly.

The same is true for the later rounds. In a bigger tournament, the No. 1 overall seed has more opportunities to lose, but so does all the other teams. The depression in the odds due to playing more games is almost exactly offset by the odds that the path to the title will be easier.

That said, this effect does not quite offset as the NCAA Tournament becomes small enough. The odds for the all of the top-16 teams are slightly better in the 16-team tournament. The odds for the 48-team tournament are similar because in the case that I considered there are only 16 at large bids and a disproportionately large number of weaker teams in the field.

In this case, playing fewer games does boost the odds of those top-16 teams slightly (by a percentage point or two for each team). But another way to look at it is that there are simply fewer teams available to actually win the tournament. In the larger tournaments, 10 to 14 percent of the time, a team outside of the top-16 teams will win the National Title (which is also consistent with the history of the real Tournament since 1979). But, if only 16 total teams are invited, that 10 to 14 percent of probability needs to go somewhere. It seems to essentially get spilt amongst the entire field.

The general takeaway from this analysis that I have is the following. While the structure of the tournament is certainly important, it does not make much of a difference in the actual outcome. What does matter, is how good the teams actually are relative to each other.

In this example, there are two teams (Gonzaga and Baylor) who graded out as much better than the rest of the field. As a result, the odds of one of those two teams winning the National Title is just over 40 percent, no matter which of the six tournament formats are used. That said, that still implies that there is a 60 percent chance that some other team wins the Title.

So, teams like Gonzaga and Baylor have very good odds and would likely win a seven-game series against most teams in the field. But, in order to win the National Title in college basketball they need to bring their A-game in each of the single elimination games in the Big Dance. Chaos or madness is still very much a possibility...just the way we like it.

Neil's Preview: https://msuspartans.com/news/2021/1...liar-foe-penn-state-up-next-for-spartans.aspx

Tonight at 6 pm
Tomorrow at 3 pm

Both Games can be seen on BTN+

Other Series this weekend:

Notre Dame at Minnesota
Ohio State at Michigan
ASU at Wisconsin

Everything is Friday-Saturday

Current Standings:

1. Minnesota - 27 pts, 10 GP
2. Wisconsin - 19 pts, 10 GP
3. Ohio St. - 13 pts, 10 GP
4. ND - 12 pts, 10 GP
5. MSU - 11 pts, 10 GP
6. UM - 11 pts, 10 GP
7. PSU - 9 pts, 10 GP

It's Minnesota's world and we're just living in it.

I've noticed a lot of sports personalities appearing with Oxford shirt, Coat and (Gasp) no tie.

Can we erase this STUPID tradition of mens' formal fashion of the neck tie for good? Geez I hate having to cinch that noose around my neck that I wear because some Judge thinks it's "respectful" and in "accordance with tradition" F-that. Men wearing ties is just stupid. It serves no purpose.

Help ? Please?!

I may have missed info on him. No story on this new transfer coming in for 20-21?

Edit: Add Jeremy Davidson (F) 20-21 to the ”who’s the new recruit” list.

We won't be able to do game stories after every game. But when we have some human resources available, we'll do that hockey:

That sucks. One guy I was really hoping would take off.

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Schoolcraft native Jeremy Davidson has committed to the Spartans.

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93 points in 142 USHL games

1-2-3 in 22 games with Amherst.

For those of us who have been Michigan State basketball fans for a while, we have experienced a lifetime worth of crazy finishes in the past 20 or 30 years. MSU has both won and lost on buzzer-beaters and other crazy late game situations. I recall watching Korie Lucious hitting the game-winner in the second round of the 2010 NCAA tournament which paved the way for Tom Izzo’s sixth Final Four. But, I also remember Kenny Anderson of Georgia Tech hitting a shot (after the buzzer) to knock Jud Heathcote’s Spartans out of the Sweet 16 in Steve Smith’s senior year of 1990, which very likely cost Heathcote a chance at his second Final Four, if not second title.

I could go on to list a dozen examples of Michigan State wins or loses in the final seconds of a game. Many of those wins were glorious and many of the losses were crushing. But, the lesson is essentially the same.

You win some. You lose some.

In general, the team that wins is the one that makes the most plays at the end of the game. Last Friday Purdue made those plays, and MSU did not. The Spartans threw away both a 17-point second half lead and several chances to put away the Boilermakers in the final seconds of the game. MSU needed to win this game. But, the team did not. Now, the train-wrecked Spartans are sitting at 2-4 in league play and seem to have more questions than answers. It feels like the season in now officially on the brink.

As we will see below, the current numbers are not kind to the Green and White. But, in my role as the enteral optimist, I will offer a few reasons why things may not quite be as bad as they seem.

• Many factors that led to the loss to Purdue were bad luck. While it is often true that good teams create their own luck and bad teams don’t, MSU had this game won if it were not for missed free throws, a bad inbounds play, and some bad luck with the possession arrow. In the final seconds of the game, Kenpom estimated that Purdue had less than a four percent chance to win. Bad luck is likely to even out over a 20-game schedule.
• The defense is getting better. While it is easy to point to the complete failure on the offensive side of the ball in the second half, it was MSU’s improving defense that built the 17-point lead. Defense travels and if the Spartans can continue to be strong in this area, they will have a chance in every remaining game.
• MSU has played very well...in stretches. Despite the final scores, keep in mind that MSU at one point had a 28-point lead over Notre Dame, a 16-point lead over Duke, a nine-point lead over Wisconsin, a 17-point lead over Nebraska, a 25-point lead over Rutgers, and a 17-point lead over Purdue. The problem is maintaining that level of play for the full 40 minutes.
• Players like Rocket Watts, Gabe Brown, and Joey Hauser can play better. While Aaron Henry and Josh Langford have mostly been carrying the load over the past few games, several other players seem to be in a slump. It is unlikely that those slumps will continue much longer. MSU needs at least one (and hopefully more) additional player to step up and break out.
• Michigan State still has Tom Izzo. It is easy to question the coaching staff in areas such as player rotations, but at the end of the day, if you are reading this article and your name is not Mike Krzyzewski, John Wooden, Dean Smith, or Roy Williams, Izzo has a lot more Final Fours than you do. Coach Izzo knows what he is doing and if anyone can right the ship, it’s him. For better or worse, he has five full days to work in his lab to fix what is ailing the team.

Now that I have given you that little pep talk, let’s take a peek at what the math current says about MSU’s current situation.

Current Standings and Odds Update

As usual, here are the updated enhanced Big Ten standings as of Jan. 11, 2021.

Table 1: Big Ten enhanced standings as of January 11th, 2021


With the loss to Purdue the Spartans are once again two games below .500 and residing the bottom half of the conference. The fact that the loss came at home also drops MSU to -1 in the plus/minus metric (which is simply the number of road wins minus home loses).

The Green and White are also still last in the conference when it comes to “luck” at -1.10. Basically, even with MSU struggling and underachieving, the math suggests that the record should be 3-3 and not 2-4. The other teams currently in the “unlucky” category include Penn State (-0.88), Ohio State (-0.76), and Nebraska (-0.70). As for the lucky teams, Northwestern (+1.37), Michigan (+1.07), and Minnesota (+0.65) are at the head of the class.

Similar to the past few updates, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois are all established as the current top-four teams in the conference with a combined record of 19-4. The Illini were upset by Maryland last night, which does knock them back a half step from the top-three teams.

Table 2 below shows the updated Big Ten win distribution matrix as of Jan 11.

Table 2: Big Ten win distribution matrix for January 11th, 2021


Following the win over Rutgers, the Spartans were clearly trending in a positive direction and at least getting to 10-10 seems reasonable. Today, MSU’s expected win total has dropped back down to 7.7, which is only slightly better than the total prior to the win over the Scarlet Knights. Basically, all of the gains made in that win were erased by the loss to Purdue. The odds that MSU finishes at 10-10 or better are now back at just 18 percent.

Table 3 below gives the updated odds for each team to win the Big Ten regular season title.

Table 3: Big Ten regular season championship odds as of January 11th, 2021


The Big Ten races is still most likely a four-team race between Iowa, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Illinois. But, Iowa (44 percent) and Michigan (39 percent) have gotten a little bit of separation from Wisconsin (24 percent) and Illinois (17 percent). The next most likely team to raise a banner is Ohio State, and the Buckeyes’ odds are only 1.5 percent. The math also suggest that the eventual Big Ten champs will finish with a record of 16-4 or better (73 percent odds).

MSU’s odds are still non-zero, but I need to show them using scientific notation. The odds work out to about 1-in-2,200. If MSU is somehow able to crawl back into the race, the most likely scenario is a multi-team tie where several schools finish at 14-6 and there is significant attrition at the top of the standings.

Strength of Schedule Update

Figure 1 below gives the updated overall strengths of schedule for all 14 Big Ten schools.


Figure 1: Overall Big Ten strengths of schedule as of January 11th, 2021

Overall, the strengths of schedule calculations are fairly stable. Illinois, Purdue, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all still grade out with the easiest schedules, while MSU’s schedules is still the fifth most difficult.

Figure 2 below gives the updates strengths of schedule showing only remaining games, normalized to percentages.


Figure 2: Big Ten strengths of remaining schedule normalized to expected win percentage by an average Power Five team

In this case, the most notable change is that MSU now appears to have the most difficult remaining schedule in the entire Big Ten. An average power five team would only be expected to win 47 percent of MSU’s remaining 14 games. In other words, an average power five team (defined as a team with a Kenpom efficiency margin of 19.0) would be most likely to go 6-8 or 7-7 with MSU’s remaining schedule.

MSU is not playing up to that standard right now. So, in order to get to a record approaching 10-10, MSU needs to start playing a lot better and likely needs a bit of good fortune (such as an opposing team committing a late turnover or missing clutch free throws, just to throw out a random example).

It should also be noted that Maryland also has a relatively easy remaining schedule. The Terrapins are 2-5, but have wins now over both Illinois and Wisconsin. The Terps could wind up being a team that is competing with MSU for the last Big Ten bid to the NCAA tournament. It would definitely benefit the Spartans to stay ahead of Maryland in the standings, but the schedule is slanted against the Green and White in this case.

Big Ten Tournament Projection

If the season ended today, that would be weird, because only 41 total Big Ten games have been played (29 percent of the season) and the teams have not played the same number of games. That said, it is possible to make projections about the Big Ten tournament based on the simulated results. Table 4 below provides that update.

Table 4: Big Ten Tournament seed probability matrix


The overall simulation suggests that MSU is now right on the fence between the No. 11 seed and the No. 12 seed, with the No. 11 seed or better being slightly more likely (57 percent). In the scenario where every favored team wins, MSU winds up with the No. 13 seed. Woof.

MSU’s Current Position and Upcoming Schedule

Following MSU’s loss to Purdue, I have updated the Kenpom scatter plot to show the current position of MSU relative to past MSU teams, previous champions, and the current field of national contenders.


Figure 3: Kenpom efficiency scatter plot for January 11th, 2021

It should come as no surprise that Michigan State improved once again in defensive efficiency, but dropped in offensive efficiency. The only bright spot is that MSU’s overall efficiency did not change much as MSU was only a slight favorite going into the game, and only lost by a point.

Once again, the Spartans still have time to improve to a level of efficiency where good things have happened before (such as 2010). But, the Spartans cannot afford to lose too many more winnable games before the NCAA Tournament streak is in real jeopardy. I don’t think that we are quite there yet, but we are getting dangerously close.

As for the remaining schedule, Figure 4 below summarizes the updated odds for all of MSU’s remaining regular season games.


Figure 4: Projected odds for MSU's remaining schedule

Unfortunately, the math now shows that the home game against Indiana is now slightly below the 50 percent line, which leaves only two games (the home games against Nebraska and Penn State) where MSU will be clearly favored. But, it also true that in a full 10 of MSU’s remaining 14 games, the point spread is predicted to the less than five points (roughly odds over 30 percent). In other words, there are still a lot of “winnable” games left on the schedule.

For better or worse, Michigan State’s next game at Iowa on Thursday night looks like the most difficult game left on the schedule, and MSU will have several days to prepare. As such, even if MSU loses, the Spartans’ performance will tell us a lot about the what to expect for the rest of the year.

If Michigan State gets blown out, it clearly will not be a good sign, but it is not the end of the world. If MSU can keep the game close, it would suggest that MSU is capable of winning basically any of the remaining games on the schedule. If MSU is somehow able to win, this next update in this series will have much more positive news to share.

For the first time in a while, Michigan State is playing in a game on Thursday where there is essentially nothing to lose, but a lot to gain. That can be a powerful combination for the underdog and a dangerous one for the home team that has a history of not playing defense. I am looking forward to seeing how the Spartans measure up.

That’s all for now. Until next time, enjoy and Go State, beat the Hawkeyes!

Dang. It's come a long way. The technology is ruining the sport. Sailing is about skill. Sailing is about skill and ....... jeez we are doomed

I was told by a source Mazur had de-committed and he is now listed as de-committed by Tri-City. He was a Little Ceasar’s teammate with Tanner Kelly & Tiernan Shoudy who are committed to MSU. Tough loss but makes sense after Cole has taken commitments from 2 20 year old forwards, who have to come in next season. Currently 7 Fs committed who could arrive next season, not all will of course, and who knows what seniors will come back.

Maybe it's the overall sour condition of MSU Sports right now that has me frustrated but I've got to think the bloom is off the flower in the hockey program right now. What is this year 4? Bottom 2 again in the league? How is help not already here?

Just not impressed but I'm not "in the know" with this program. Any thoughts would be appreciated