Bracketology has 8 Big Ten Teams!

hapshaughnessy — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 00:12:55 -0000

Michigan State, Purdue, Illinois, Ohio State, Wisconsin, Michigan. Penn State, and Minnesota are predicted to make the Big Ten tournament by ESPN.com's bracketologist Joe Lunardi. My bet would be that at least one, probably two of these teams won't make the tournament. Michigan still has to play Purdue, and Wisconsin in Madison. I don't think they're good enough to make the tourney. Of course, we should ask ourselves, are the Gophers? I think that our perfect non-conference season will just barely push us in, but we need to win at least 2 preferably 3 of the final 4 here, and/or have a good showing at the Big Ten tourney. Out remaining games:

at home vs. Northwestern. Even though they beat us the first time, I think we'll be desparate enough to take this one. And hopefully we'll have a good home field advantage.

Illinois in Champaign. Even though we beat the Illini the first go-round, I doubt that that carries over to this game. We haven't beaten them in Champaign in, oh, forever (probably before I was born, and that ain't no joke). I may be proven wrong though. They only scored 33 against Penn State the other day.

at home vs. Wisconsin. This one's really hard to predict. On one hand, we've already beaten the Badgers, at Kohl Center, nonetheless.But that was a very long time ago. We've been spiraling downwards, and they're been on fire defensively, allowing below 53 points in 5 straight games now. I'm not sure if we can beat them in the Barn.

at home vs. Michigan. If we can prevent Michigan from catching fire like they did last night, I think we have a chance to beat them on our home floor. The game will probably be determining all kinds of Big Ten and NCAA tourney seeding and bid and such, so I'd expect both teams to give it their all. Unfortunately, Michigan's all probably beats our all.

Well, good news, 3 home games. Bad news, none of them are pushovers, and two of them have already beaten us. Time is running out if we're going to make the NCAAs.

Statistical Analysis of Big Ten Basketball!

hapshaughnessy — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 22:43:42 -0000

Hi everyone! Recently, I was bored in my basement. Since I am a math nerd, the obvious thing to occupy my time was to create a mathematical way to predict the outcome of the Big Ten basketball season. I've done this type of thing before with football, so I already knew my basic process... If you don't like math as much as I do, feel free to skip my explanation and go right to the results of the "study", at the bottom of the post.

First, I had to find the expected winning percentages of each team when they play at home and on the road. Because plain ole winning percentage isn't very telling of a teams' true talent, I used several other factors:

Pythagorean Expectation. This is a simple formula that shows a teams' expected winning % based on their points scored and allowed. This will account for 20% of the final, adjusted %.

Home/Road Winning %'s. Simply a teams' percentage at home, and another for their road games. These will account for 15% of the final winning expectation, but I'll have to find two different %'s for each team: home and away.

Winning % against teams over .600. Because games against cupcakes in the non-conference schedule don't tell us much, this portion of the formula will tell us how well the team responds against worthy opponents who have won over 6-% of their games. This will account for 15% of the final

Actual percentage is still important, obviously, and will be 50% of each team's expectation number.

Here are each teams' home and road winning percentages:

Michigan State Home: .850 Away: .868

Illinois Home: .858 Away: .795

Purdue Home: .809 Away: .794

Minnesota Home: .841 Away: .832

Penn State Home: .737 Away: .698

Michigan Home: .713 Away: .626

Ohio State Home: .732 Away: .667

Wisconsin Home: .648 Away: .589

Iowa Home: .643 Away: .528

Northwestern Home: .628 Away: .551

Indiana Home: .245 Away: .185

Now that we know the expected percentages of each team, we need to find the odds of Team A beating Team B with their given %'s. Here's a formula that was developed by baseball statistician Bill James for just this purpose:

Win %(team A)= (A-AB)/(A+B-2AB)

Using this formula, I was able to find the odds of each Big Ten team to win in each of their remaining Big Ten games.

By adding up each games' individual percentage I was able to get an average win total for each team. I also looked at what would happen if there were no upsets, and simulated 5 seasons, with random numbers to see who won. Here's the team by team breakdown. Gophers are at the very bottom, to build the suspense!

Note: Mondays' Purdue/Wisconsin clash was not included in the data.

Michigan State Average Record: 14-4, 1st Record without Upsets: 17-1, 1st

Simulation Standings: 1st, 2nd, 1st, 5th, 1st

Illinois Average Record: 12-6, t-2nd Record without Upsets: 14-4, 2nd

Simulation Standings: 3rd, 1st, t-3rd, t-1st, t-2nd

Purdue Average Record: 12-6, t-2nd Record without Upsets: 13-5, t-2nd

Simulation Standing: t-5th, 3rd, t-5th, 6th, t-2nd

Penn State Average Record: 10-8, 5th Record without Upsets: 9-9, t-5th

Simulation Standings: 4th, t-4th, 7th, t-1st, t-5th

Michigan Average Record: 8-10, t-7th Record without Upsets: 6-12, t-8th

Simulation Standings: 7th, 9th, 9th, t-8th, t-5th

Ohio State Average Record: 9-9, 6th Record without Upsets: 9-9, t-5th

Simulation Standings: 8th, 10th, t-3rd, t-1st, t-5th

Wisconsin Average Record: 8-10, t-7th Record without Upsets: 6-12, t-9th

Simulation Standings: t-5th, 6th, t-5th, t-8th, 8th

Northwestern Average Record: 7-11, t-9th Record without Upsets: 5-13, 10th

Simulation Standings: 10th, t-7th, 10th, 10th, 10th

Indiana Average Record: 1-17, 11th Record without Upsets: 0-18, 11th

Simulation Standings: 11th, 11th, 11th, 11th, 11th

And finally...drum roll please...your...Minnesota...Golden...Gophers!

Minnesota Average Record: 12-6, t-2nd Record without Upsets: 13-5, t-3rd

Simulation standings: 2nd, t-4th, 2nd, 4th, t-4th

So, there are several interesting inferences to be made here:

Michigan State will more than likely, take home the conference crown
Illinois is no fluke
Michigan's good(ish) start will not continue, they figure to finish about 7th.
It will be a tight race for second, especially is Sparty stumbles, with Illinois, Minnesota, and Purdue all vying for the second spot in the tournament.
Wisconsin will rebound at least a little from this horrendous start. 7th in the conference just might get an NCAA berth with a good showing at the conference tourney.
Indiana is just not very good. They'll be lucky to win multiple Big Ten games, and could go 0-18!

Thanks for reading, everyone. Hope you enjoyed it!

SB Nation User Blog: hapshaughnessy

Bracketology has 8 Big Ten Teams!

Statistical Analysis of Big Ten Basketball!