My larger point is that the numbers say MSU is the best team in the Big Ten by a wide margin. Maryland is only “leading the conference all season” because of a handful of crazy comebacks.
Based on how every Big Ten team has performed in league play, I would say Michigan State would be unlucky if it didn’t win at least a share of the Big Ten title.
I do agree that the sequencing of games would make everyone proclaim it to be a choke, though.
Maryland is 6th in CONFERENCE PLAY ONLY adjusted efficiency but are likely going to win the league outright. Wild.
Here are the raw numbers, at this point I’m guessing that the adjusted ones hurt the teams who were highly ranked in the non-conf a bit.
Yeah you’re probably right. Adjusted numbers in determining the validity of a conference champion probably don’t hold as much weight as the raw numbers. But may show that a team has had a very weak conference schedule (which Maryland has had. 14th ranked schedule so far. albeit with the 2nd toughest remaining 3 games. with the caveat that better teams have easier schedules because they can’t play themselves)
I’m sure Northwestern is especially really disappointed that they can’t play themselves.
How is MSU in February? I get the impression that their numbers are boosted by their winning streak in January but maybe I’m wrong.
Both sad and funny at the same time. Some teams just find a way to lose, and Minny has been that team. They did the same thing against Iowa a couple weeks ago. It’s easy to pin it on “coaching”, but I don’t know. Can a terrible turnover and two guys absolutely bricking front ends of one-and-ones be chalked up to coaching?
Not sure, but it might be fun to take a stroll through the Illinois game thread from a couple weeks back with that context.
Does January somehow matter less? Michigan State had better performances in Jan but every Big Ten game should still count.
You don’t think results get more significant the more recent they are? Obviously for a tournament resume they should all matter equally, but I don’t see how the way a team progresses through the season is insignificant.
If we’re talking about the current state of the team, then I would say that yes, February matters more than January (not that January doesn’t matter of course).
I’ve never much liked the Pitino name (no kidding! 
) and I’ve never cared much for Little Ricky, himself, but it’s hard not to feel badly for him. Certainly some of it is coaching but you’re right. I’m pretty sure they work on pressure free throws, and I’m also pretty sure they work on time and score, although about that with Little Ricky I’m not too sure. But, having been there, losing a game everyone in the building thought we were going to win, and understanding that I could have done some things differently, I know that, while I was “snug as a bug in a rug,” sleeping away the night, not really a care in the world, Little Ricky didn’t sleep. I’m sure it was a pretty agonizing night for him. I’ve been there. I understand.
Folks on here were pretty critical of Pickiel, too, but Pickiel had no time outs left, at the end of the game, he had used them coaching his butt off just to get back into the game against a pretty good Penn State team in a tough environment.
I’m sure Pickiel had covered everything the team needed to do in that last time out (I think it was called by PSU, actually). He had talked about defending without fouling. I’m sure he talked about contesting the three without fouling. And I’d bet money he talked with them about end of the game situations, whether ahead or behind and what they should do in both scenarios. Yet, it didn’t happen.
Dread, who hadn’t made a three all night (0-5), hit a dagger from three, and, frankly, Pickiel’s team panicked. People on our forum called that last possession “horrible” and “embarrassing,” but I’m sure there were kids in tears in that visiting locker room after the game. And I’m sure Steve Pickiel got very little sleep, either, last night. I’ve been there and I understand. Isn’t perspective wonderful!?!
I think that the entire body of work is a much better indicator of what a team will do tomorrow, next week or two weeks from now.
I think that ebbs and flows in performance across time periods usually have more to do with the ebbs and flows in the schedule. The fact that MSU has outscored Big Ten teams by almost 2x as many points as anyone else in the league is more important to me than the sequence of wins and losses.
Michigan is a situation where there’s a reason the team is playing a lot better (Livers, for example) but Michigan’s winning streak also comes over a much easier stretch of schedule.
So for, say, the 2017 Michigan team you think the middle stretch of the year with losses to #46 Maryland at home, #73 OSU at home, #66 Illinois on the road, and #71 Iowa on the road is as much an indicator of that team’s ability as how they ended the year following the blowout of MSU?
Torvik does include how teams are playing recently as a variable in his rankings
Yeah, I understand the reason to weigh the whole schedule equally (and that needs to be done with tournament selection), but there is a human element to it and basketball teams getting hot is a real thing. We experienced it first hand in 2017 and 2018 when those Michigan teams were middle of the road in the Big Ten all year and then put together a hot stretch to end the season, beating a lot of really good teams along the way. There was no question those teams at the end of the season were different than they were earlier in the year. What Derrick Walton did in December was not predictive of what he would do in March. How this year’s team played defensively in early January is not indicative of how they will likely play defense to end the season.
Yeah, I’m not saying that recent performance shouldn’t matter. I just don’t think you can count out the fact that MSU has been significantly better than the rest of the league over 16-17 games each.
Especially when we are talking about deserving to win the Big Ten or being “lucky” … It would be rare for a team to lead the league in EM by that significant of a chunk and not win the league.
What about 2013 when the team started hot, then finished 6-6 from February through the B1G tournament? Can find examples of both ways. And the 2017 team was really only bad for a month
I think that those games need to count as four out of 38 data points. A team that plays as well as that Michigan team did in early November or March is also going to lose some games along the way.
We deal with very small sample sizes in college basketball and the sequencing of losses and wins can skew how we see things. Important to look at as much data as we have.