On Wednesday night in East Lansing, the Michigan State Spartans beat the Penn State Nittany Lions by the score of 90-85. The Spartans appeared to struggle on the defensive side of the ball, especially in the second half, and failed to put Penn State away in the final minutes. Both fans and Coach Izzo were a bit annoyed by the lackluster performance.
Then again, Michigan State never trailed against Penn State on Wednesday night. The margin only got below two possessions once in the final 15 minutes of the game for a period of 18 seconds. While the Spartans had to fight through some amount of game pressure, the threat of an upset was minimal. The situation was simply a departure from the recent trend of beating conference teams at Breslin by over 30 points.
The Spartans weren't the only Big Ten contender that struggled over the past week. Purdue is traveling to the Pacific Northwest this week and found themselves down by 10 points late in the second half at Washington on Wednesday. The Boilermakers rallied in the second half to win by 11 points, but the early upset alert was audible all the way back in the Midwest.
The Michigan Wolverines were 9.5-point favorites on the road at last-place Minnesota on Thursday night but returned home with a three-point loss in overtime. While the near-half-court heave that sealed the fate of the Wolverines was miraculous, the Golden Gophers controlled the action for the final four minutes of regulation and in overtime.
By the time the dust had settled on Thursday evening, the Spartans found themselves alone in first place as the sole undefeated team in conference action. Table 1 below gives the updated enhanced Big Ten standings.
As of Saturday morning, Michigan State holds a half game lead over Purdue, a full game lead over Michigan, and a one-and-a-half game lead over Illinois.
Those four current contenders are all currently ranked between No. 8 and No. 14 in Kenpom. All four teams have three road wins, but Illinois also lost one game at home to USC and is thus one game back in the "plus/minus" metric.
Table 1 also shows that Purdue has a slightly easier strength of schedule than the other three contenders by about 0.30 games.
The updated Big Ten win matrix is shown below in Table 2. These expected win totals are based on the results of a 1,000,000-cycle Monte Carlo simulation of the remainder of the Big Ten regular season.
Despite the fact that Michigan State is alone in first place, the Purdue Boilermakers were able to surge just ahead of the Spartans in conference expected wins by the slimmest of margins: 14.62 to 14.54. This narrow lead is due to Purdue's slightly better Kenpom ranking as well as the slightly easier remaining schedule.
Michigan (14.12) and Illinois (14.04) are now both about a half of a game behind the two leaders while Oregon (12.75) and Wisconsin (12.33) are about two games of expected wins off the lead.
Table 3 below gives the current odds for the top eight teams to win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title based on the same simulation.
As expected, Michigan State now has the best overall odds to at least share in the Big Ten regular season title at 35.3%. Despite Purdue's slightly better expected win total, the Boilermakers' odds are just below the Spartans' odds at 34.7%.
Michigan (27.5%) and Illinois (23.7%) are in the next grouping and are just off the lead lap, while Oregon (7.7%) and Wisconsin (5.6%) are longshots. No other Big Ten team has odds over one percent.
If the Spartans hope to stay in first place, a win over Illinois on Sunday is critical. Sunday's game is the first of five games that Michigan State plays against the other three contenders in the final 14 games of the regular season. A win in three of those five games would have the Spartans in very solid position.
In this scenario, Michigan State could likely afford to lose one or two additional games (for example at UCLA or at Maryland) and still gave a great shot at a title. As Figure 1 below shows, the results of the latest simulation suggest that a 17-3 record will almost certainly (96%) ensure another banner at Breslin Center and even a record of 16-4 (76%) makes at least a share of the title likely.
As for the Big Ten Tournament, the current list of projected top four seeds is consistent with the top four contenders listed in the tables above. Purdue has a slight edge in average seed, but Michigan State has the best odds to claim the No. 1 seed.
Interestingly, if the projected favorites win all remaining conference games, the Spartans and Wolverines would tie for the title with 17-3 records. Michigan would get the No. 1 seed in this scenario due to a win in Ann Arbor over No. 3 seed Illinois (16-4).
Purdue is projected to finish at 15-5 and with the No. 4 seed in this scenario thanks to projected close losses at Michigan, Michigan State, Oregon (which takes place Saturday afternoon), and Illinois.
