The Big Ten schedule is setting them up and so far, the Michigan State Spartans are knocking them down. This time around, the Spartans went into Evanston, Ill. and knocked off Chicago's Big Ten team. On Sunday afternoon, Michigan State prevailed over Northwestern, 78-68, to move to 5-0 in conference play.
The other notable outcome of the weekend was Illinois' somewhat shocking home loss to lowly USC. In contrast, Michigan and Purdue plugged along, each picking up double-digit wins at home. As a result, the updated enhanced Big Ten standings are shown below in Table 1:
Based on the games completed through Monday night, 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.
The Michigan Wolverines currently sit at the top of the table with an expected conference win total of 15.32 wins. The Spartans sit less than a game back at 14.51 expected wins with Purdue in third place with an expectation of 14.29 wins. The Fighting Illini took more than a game-and-a-half hit over the weekend to drop to just 13.16 expected conference wins.
Table 3 below gives the current odds for the top 12 teams to win at least a share of the Big Ten regular season title based on the same simulation.
As things stand on January 14th, the Wolverines have just below 50-50 odds to hang a regular season banner. Michigan State has the next best odds at 32%, with Purdue (26%), and Illinois (11%) as the only other two teams with current odds over 6%.
Table 3 also suggests that while the single most likely record needed to win the regular season title is 16-4 (with 32% odds), it is more likely than not (52%) that a minimum record of 17-3 will be needed to secure at least a share of the title. There is a 21% chance that the Big Ten Champion(s) will have a record of 18-2 or better.
If the projected favorites were to win all 130 remaining conference games, Michigan would finish at 18-2 and in first place. Michigan State would finish in second place at 17-3 with Purdue and Illinois tied for third place at 15-5.
In this scenario, Illinois would claim the No. 3 seed in the Big Ten Tournament thanks to a head-to-head win in Champaign over the Boilermakers.
Why is Michigan in the Lead?
A glance at the enhanced standings shown in Table 1 has the two mitten-state schools tied at the top of the conference. Yet, the Wolverines are almost a full game (0.80) ahead in expected wins and 18 percentage points ahead in title odds.
Why is that?
First, according to the predictive metrics that underpin my simulation, the Wolverines are considered a slightly better team. Kenpom has Michigan ranked No. 10 and Michigan State ranked No. 14. This small difference suggests that the Wolverines would be favored by about one point over the Spartans on a neutral court.
This razor-thin margin translates into about a 3.5-percentage point advantage per remaining game. With 15 games left for both teams, that adds up to a little over half of a game advantage.
The second reason the Wolverines are projected ahead is due to the strengths of schedule for the two teams. Figure 1 below gives the updated overall strength of schedule data for the full conference.