Michigan State got a couple humongous wins this week, taking down Illinois and Ohio State in East Lansing in a three-day stretch. On the heels of a win in Bloomington on Saturday, Sparty’s feeling good.
But how good should they feel?
Michigan State has four regular season games left: One is at Maryland on Sunday. One is a rematch with Indiana up at the Breslin Center on Tuesday. The final two are a quick home-and-home with Michigan, who you may have heard is quite a team this year. In our model’s median simulation, MSU goes 1-3 over this stretch, finishes ninth or tenth in the Big Ten, and then loses immediately in the Big Ten Tournament.
And they’re still just our seventh at-large team out of the field. Sixth if there aren’t any bid thieves.
If Michigan State can beat Indiana again and win even just one of the Maryland/Michigan/Michigan trio, one would guess they’d be right on the precipice. If Michigan State can beat Indiana again and win their Big Ten Tournament opener, one would guess they’d at least be within a seed line of the field. They’re in the territory in which a berth is highly attainable. But they’re far from safe.
There are two more things to consider, and they have to do with everyone around Michigan State. The first is how median seeding clumps shake out. Michigan State’s median seed in our model’s simulation is 57th, with the median cut line 48th. That’s a slightly wider gap than six or seven teams. There are a lot from 44-50, a lot from 54-59, and no one between those clumps. There’s also the matter of what each of those S-Curve neighbors does. Part of the value of beating Indiana, for the Spartans, would be pushing the Hoosiers down below them. But Sparty also doesn’t want Duke to go on a run. Sparty also wants Wichita State and SMU to flop in the AAC Tournament. Sparty also wants Western Kentucky to maybe just grab the Conference USA automatic bid and take themselves off the bubble grid. And of course, as alluded to above, there are bid thief possibilities in the Mountain West, the American, the Atlantic 10, the Missouri Valley…etc. And that’s without worrying about the Big East and Pac-12.
There’s a lot that can go right for Michigan State over the next two and a half weeks.
There’s also a lot that can go wrong.
Our bracketology’s biggest movements this morning:
Moving Up: Colorado
Yesterday, the Buffs saw their projected seed drop from a 7 to a 9 thanks to, of all the things, mainly a Rutgers win.
Last night, Ralphie got those seed lines back.
Colorado beat USC in explosive fashion in Boulder, playing well, by their standards, for the first time in two weeks. Jeriah Horne shot the lights out and pulled down eleven rebounds, McKinley Wright dished out an eye-popping fourteen assists, and Tad Boyle’s guys reminded everyone what they’ve shown themselves capable of doing.
Colorado isn’t the Pac-12 Tournament favorite. Their median simulation includes a one-point semifinal loss in a rematch with the Trojans. But even with the losses—at Cal, at Washington, home against Utah—Colorado’s good enough to make some noise, especially if they can stay above an 8-seed and avoid the Gonzaga/Baylor second-round night terror.
Moving Down: Ehhh, no one by much
Nobody dropped more than a seed line besides Minnesota, and we’ll get to them in a moment.
Moving In: Richmond
Has everyone’s December sleeper awoken?
Not really.
But Richmond’s in good shape. They’re expected to split their next two—a trip to Saint Louis today followed by a visit from Saint Joe’s on Monday—and then lose in the A-10 semifinals, and that should evidently just barely be enough. As with Michigan State, they’re on the bubble and far from safe, and a lot can go wrong around them. But the model already sees a lot going wrong that could go right. That SLU game? Pretty much a tossup. That A-10 semifinal? Even if it’s against VCU, the most likely opponent, pretty much a tossup. Life’s good in Spiderland. For now.
Moving Out: Minnesota
And, as mentioned, it was Minnesota making way for our Virginian friends. Others have lost to Northwestern, but only Indiana also did it at home, and for the Gophers it’s now the fourth straight cannonball to hit their sinking ship. In none of the seven games prior to last night did the Gophers do something all that unexpected, but the expectation was that they’d do better than 2-5 overall in that stretch. With Northwestern making it a 2-6 run (2-7, really, including the last unexpected result before last night, a home loss to Maryland), things are bad in Dinkytown. Between the Penn State game Wednesday and the Rutgers game next Saturday, the Gophers need to win at least one they shouldn’t. And that’s assuming they win in Lincoln tomorrow, which is no guarantee.
Conference Updates
After last night’s Horizon League happenings, the championship probabilities (our model bases individual game simulations largely off of KenPom) line up as follows:
Wright State: 67.6%
Cleveland State: 14.0%
Detroit Mercy: 7.8%
Northern Kentucky: 4.4%
Oakland: 3.1%
Youngstown State: 1.8%
Milwaukee: 1.0%
Purdue-Fort Wayne: 0.3%
And in other model news, we got the Patriot League (which announced a tournament format change within the last 48 hours), NEC, and Summit League all to almost-finalized, bringing the total count of almost-finalized conferences in our model (those that are just missing tiebreaker rules, home-court advantage implications, and/or reseeding) to 13, with the number of conferenes finalized still just at one (the Horizon League). Those almost-finalized: A-10, A-East, A-Sun, Big South, CAA, MVC, NEC, OVC, Patriot, SoCon, Summit, Sun Belt, WCC. Looking to finalize the Big South and A-East prior to tomorrow’s update, as they tip off tomorrow afternoon. Looking to almost-finalize the MEAC, and possibly a few more. With all of these finalizations and almost-finalizations, we aren’t seeing much movement, but we might see more when we get to the power conferences and acknowledge that certain postponed games won’t be made up. Keep on checking this space.
