Basketball B1Ggest scheduling disadvantage goes to MSU then Indiana

My assumptions have flaws, because we don't know enough about how the teams rank out relative to each other this early in the B1G season.  Nevertheless, I thought I could get a gauge of the teams by looking at their performances in/out of conference.

At first I thought of creating only two tiers, but I thought that equating Wisconsin to Indiana (for example was too much of a stretch).  I thought four tiers worked out better, and so I placed teams into their tiers by considering their schedules in/out of conference as well as their losses.

Indiana, Minnesota and Michigan don't have very many losses and none of those losses were per se bad losses (losing at OSU by 3 is not a bad loss IMO).  Minnesota lost to Duke and Indiana, and I think they played them pretty close (although like Michigan vs. OSU, Minnesota fell behind by a large deficit early to Indiana, only to fight back in a tough venue).  Indiana losing only to Butler in a close game is ultimately one loss, even if it was to Butler.  Overall, based on watching these teams play, they look like very strong teams.

I put OSU, MSU and Wisconsin in the second tier because of losses they've each suffered and also because of noticeable flaws in their production.  OSU has limited scoring options but a great defense.  Before beating Michigan, OSU hadn't won a game against a ranked opponent; beating Michigan at OSU is solid, but I don't think OSU can perform offensively the rest of the season with any consistency like it did in the opening 10-15 minutes against Michigan.  I think if Michigan's young players had more road experience, the team probably would have beaten OSU had they met later in the season.  Anyway, OSU also had a bad loss to a slightly above average Illinois.  MSU has flaws with consistenly turning over the ball; also, MSU has been a bit lucky facing Iowa without its leading scorer and Nebraska without one of its leading rebounders/scorers.  Despite that luck, MSU hasn't exactly blown those teams out on the road and at home respectively.  MSU also has losses to Miami (ACC challenge) and to Connecticut; it's only good win is Kansas.  Lastly (re tier 2) I described above why I put Wisconsin in tier 2; while beating Illinois soundly in Madison is good, how good is Illinois really?  No really good wins for WI even if it is unbeaten in the conference so far; WI has some questionable (to say the least) losses.

Illinois, Purdue and Iowa look well-coached, but I think they might lack the horses (i.e. talent) that the teams in the top two tiers have.  They will still be tough teams to beat because they're talent isn't that wholly deficient. It's worth noting that Iowa and Illinois have at least somewhat new coaches still implementing their systems.  In contrast, Purdue has its system set with coach Painter, but its talent has dropped off a bit since Hummel and Co. (I forgot the names of the other studs in his class) left.

The bottom tier does seem to wholly lack talent relative to the top tiers; much of this has to do with injury (NW and PSU) it seems.

I do think that a strong case can be made that there isn't much separation between the top six teams; that is why I did the second analysis in which the baseline value of the two tiers are separated by only a value of one rather than two (as in the first analysis).

Finally, the major flaw I see in the scoring of the bottom tier is this: giving those teams a baseline value of 2 implies that meeting them at their home venue makes them 50% more difficult to beat (i.e. a jump from baseline value of 2 to a score of 3); I think that places too much value on them playing in their home venues.  Similarly, those teams don't become 50% less of a challenge (i.e. a jump from a baseline value of 2 to 1) by merely having to leave their home venues. 

Anyway, I thought it was a decent attempt at analyzing the data.  I don't have more time to make the analyses more accurate, but I thought it was worth putting the data out there with my limited analyses. Also, I hope it's clear that I added up the scoring of the once-played games for each team such that the addition created a number value; a lower value for that number suggested to me that the schedule was more difficult than that of a team with a higher value for that number.

Thanks for taking an interest. Unfortunately, I don't think I can add much more to the discussion any time soon, because I got deadlines to meet outside of mgoblog.  I have to save my free time to watch as many B1G games as I can, because I don't remember ever seeing the league as strong as it is this year.