Wisconsin Basketball vs. Michigan State: Pre-Game Analysis
By Josh Blakely
The Wisconsin basketball team is set to take on the Spartans
Badger basketball takes on Michigan State today at 12:30 p.m. at the Kohl Center. The game is on CBS, so the cable-cutters among you will be able to watch the game.
Related Story: Last Time Out Badgers Fell to Northwestern
Ken Pomeroy has Michigan State as the #10 team in the country and predicts a 67-62 Spartan victory over the #63 ranked Badgers. However, my numbers show a more even game, predicting a 69-69 tie. All hail home court advantage!
Clearly, Pomeroy and I get at our predictions by different methods, so it will be interesting to see who is the master of the crystal ball. I “won” last game, against Northwestern with a 70-63 loss compared to Pomeroy’s 63-59 – the game ended up a 70-65 loss.
Since the game won’t end in a tie, I’ll adjust my prediction to 70-69, for a hard-fought Badger victory. You can see my other predictions in the chart, below.
Keep in mind that the Badgers are the red line, Michigan State is the green line, and the black line shows the advantage (or lack thereof) in each statistic as a percentage. For example, the Badgers have a 12.7% edge in free throw attempts.
As usual, the Badgers will have the edge on the offensive boards, but have big deficits in assists and blocks. The small edges that Michigan State has in making shots from the field is balanced out by the Badgers getting to the line more often and making more free throws.
Wisconsin Badgers
One thing that this analysis doesn’t take into account is Michigan State not having Denzel Valentine for 4 games this season, who is the 6th best player in the nation, according to Pomeroy. The Spartans’ team stats are lower for missing Valentine, so it makes them look worse than they are in this team-level analysis.
Before the Northwestern game, I recommended that Greg Gard play Alex Illikainen more and he played 21 minutes of very good basketball (3rd best on the team, behind Ethan Happ and Nigel Hayes). Good move by Gard. This game, it’s all about Bronson Koenig raising his game. In the first 5 games of the season, he was one of the top 3 Badgers 4 times, according to my Total Value formula. In the 13 games since, he has only been in the top 3 once.
Entering the season, we all thought he would be the second best Badger on the team and he has been a disappointment compared to that expectation, grading out as the 5th best player on the team in Total Value over the course of the season.
Were our expectations too high or is there something Koenig can do to play better? I don’t know the answer to that, but I believe that he is the key to the Badgers being able to turn things around, as he was better in prior years.
Good luck, Badgers- go beat Sparty!
Next: Badgers-Spartans Game Info
Stay tuned to Badger of Honor for more as the season continues.