Statistical Analysis of Big Ten Basketball!

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:

1. Michigan State will more than likely, take home the conference crown
2. Illinois is no fluke
3. Michigan's good(ish) start will not continue, they figure to finish about 7th.
4. 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.
   
5. 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.
6. 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!