Because I’ve somehow made my brand defending Rutgers:
Obviously the homecourt advantage was real, but a fun fact from last year: Rutgers was 2-9 on the road last year, but 7-3-1 against the spread. Michigan was 7-7 ATS on the road and MSU was 5-9 for comparison. Rutgers actually played above expectations on the road, they just had an insanely hard road schedule.
Or it’s Rutgers and the oddsmakers took too long to come around on them as actually being a decent team.
The Weave guys were talking about Rutgers being so good ATS on the road but I’m not sure what I take from that stat to be honest. Maybe that people all knew they never won away from home and over-bet it?
Rutgers road record ATS simply shows they lost some games by smaller margins than predicted. Does not have any particular meaning going into this season. They are a solid team that will likely again be middle of the pack in a tough conference and probably in contention for a tourney bid.
I mean all of those are fair points are fair, it’s possible that the odds makers knee that and adjusted the lines so it was easier for Rutgers to cover.
At the same time they covered a +7.5 spread @UMD last year (lost by 5). In the same matchup Michigan didn’t cover a +4 spread (lost by 13).
@Illinois they covered a +4.5 spread (lost by 3). Michigan didn’t cover a +1.5 spread (lost by 9).
The spreads here could be slightly off (I’m just using the first spread I could retroactively find), and it’s only two cherry picked examples, but here’s two examples where Rutgers covered the spread and Michigan didn’t on the road against top level B1G teams last year. In each game Rutgers had an easier spread to cover, but in each game Rutgers also had a definitively closer game than we did so that didn’t really matter.
This will probably be my last post defending Rutgers, because inevitably I’m going to be wrong about this since I’m so adamant about it now, but this very much feels like a situation to me where people are discounting a team because their jersey’s say Rutgers.
Fortunately we have things like KenPom that can adequately account for things like SOS and margin of victory.
Talked some Big Ten and college hoops with Alex on his podcast…
Those four guys are all going to be fascinating to watch this season for how the narrative changes around them:
ASU dropped out of Empire Classic game against Baylor. Baylor Coach Drew tested positive for Covid.
Sort of correct. It’s now Baylor who is out due to the positive and Arizona State is still heading to CT. Up in the air what games are played there but it sounds like either adding a 4th team or playing a 3-team event.
Izzo is back with Michigan State.
How would you divvy up $100?
Why no Rutgers??? 
$50 Illinois, $30 MSU, $20 Michigan
$50 MSU $40 Ill $10 Michigan
Let’s get some bang for the $100.00. Trifecta Box: Wisky, UM and Sparty in any order.
How does it pay out for split titles?
ALL of the money on Iowa 
Seriously, Illinois, MSU and Michigan seem like the values there.
Ha! I’m seeing them at 33/1