[Author's Note:

This article was originally written on the morning of Saturday, March 9. It was updated in the evening of March 9 to reflect Northwestern's win over Minnesota as well as the point spreads for the remaining six games on Sunday.]

In less than 24 hours, the 2023-24 Big Ten regular season will come to a close. In the meantime, there are still seven games left to play, which corresponds to 64 possible endings and 64 unique Big Ten Tournament brackets.

For the Michigan State Spartans, the seeding scenarios are very straight forward. If the Spartans (-3.5) 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 that evening.

In this scenario, an Illinois (-1.5) 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.

Based on the range of Michigan State's projected seeds, the first two opponents on Thursday and Friday have the largest impact on the relative difficulty of the Spartans' Big Ten Tournament path - and their success in the Big Ten Tournament will impact their NCAA seeding and placement.

Despite the 64 possible outcomes, there are currently just 14 total combinations of second round and quarterfinals opponents that Michigan State can face. That number drops to 11 if we assume the No. 14 Michigan Wolverines will not win the first-round game on Wednesday.

Let's take a closer look at each of those 11 scenarios below

As mentioned above, Michigan State will earn the Big Ten Tournament No. 6 seed if both Michigan State and Illinois win on Sunday.

Table 1 below summarizes the full tournament bracket in these 16 scenarios.

The table shows the winner of each of the remaining seven Big Ten regular season games on the left and the corresponding Big Ten Tournament seed on the right. In each row, Michigan State's most likely Thursday (second round) opponent is highlighted in yellow, and the Friday quarterfinals' opponent is highlighted in orange.

If Michigan State earns the No. 6 seed, there are only two possible No. 11 seed opponents (Ohio State and Maryland) and three possible No. 3 seed quarterfinals opponents (Nebraska, Northwestern, and Wisconsin). Thus, there are six different paths that the Spartans could take to reach the Big Ten Tournament semifinals.

As mentioned above, No. 14 seed Michigan is also a possible second round opponent, but the Wolverines will be a significant underdog (at least six points) in first round action on Wednesday against either Ohio State or Maryland. Those scenarios have been removed for simplicity.

The three columns in the center of Table 1 give the odds for each of the six clusters of scenarios as well as the average odds for Michigan State to win the Big Ten Tournament in each scenario cluster.

In general, the scenarios are listed from the easiest possible path to the most difficult. The No. 6 seed overall gives the Spartans the best chance to win the Big Ten Tournament at 6.8%.

Regarding the potential No. 11 seed opponents, the analysis is simple. In this subset of scenarios, if Maryland (+1.5) upsets Penn State in the final regular season Big Ten game of the year on Sunday evening, the Terrapins will secure the No. 11 seed. If Penn State wins, Ohio State earns the No. 11 seed.

Based on current Kenpom rankings, Michigan State is likely to be favored by around four points over either the Buckeyes or the Terrapins. So, there is no clear advantage for the Spartans in either scenario. The adage that it is difficult to beat the same team three times suggests that Ohio State may be the better opponent on Thursday.

The relative difficulty of Michigan State's Big Ten Tournament path is more dependent on the potential quarterfinals’ opponent. Current Kenpom data suggests that the Spartans would be favored over any of three potential opponents on a neutral court. Michigan State projects to be a three-point favorite over Northwestern, a two-point favorite over Nebraska, and a one-point favorite over Wisconsin.

This analysis suggests that the best scenario for Michigan State is for Northwestern to earn the No. 3 seed. The Spartans odds to win the Big Ten Tournament max out at 7.3% in this scenario. As Table 1 shows, this scenario requires Purdue (-9.5) to beat Wisconsin and Michigan (+5.5) to upset Nebraska.

The most likely scenario (and second-most beneficial at 6.7%) is for the Spartans to line up against No. 3 Nebraska. For this scenario to occur, Nebraska (-5.5) needs to beat Michigan and Purdue (-9.5) needs to beat Wisconsin (which are both likely).

The worst scenario (tournament odds drop to 6.2%) for Michigan State as the No. 6 seed is Wisconsin rising to claim the No. 3 seed. This scenario comes to pass if Wisconsin (+9.5) upsets Purdue.