- Friday night, MSU Men's Basketball will face arch-rival Michigan in Ann Arbor on Fox 47.
- I sat down with two MSU students to try and predict the winner using math.
- Video shows thoughts from both students, as well as the prediction made using their formula.
(The following is a transcription of the full broadcast story)
I'm your MSU Neighborhood Reporter Colin Jankowski. Friday night, Michigan State Men's Basketball will face Michigan in Ann Arbor right here on Fox 47. You might already have a prediction in mind about who will win, but I have a twist. I sat down with two students at Michigan State to try and predict the winner using math.
"At the end of the day, I'm a competitive person by nature, and this is a chance for me to keep doing that," Joey Larabee said.
Joey Larabee and Tanner Barry are two students at Michigan State, combining two passions into one.
"Doing sports analytics kind of matches a dream because I also really love to do math," Tanner Barry said.
Both have worked with the MSU Hockey team, collecting and analyzing data to put the team in a position to succeed.
So I tasked them both with a problem—using their background in math and sports analytics to predict the outcome of Friday's game.
We got to crunching numbers using Pythagorean formulas. For those like me who aren't math wizards, you may know it as the "Moneyball" formula in baseball.
"It was a better way to predict a team's next season performance if you ignored their actual wins and losses and rather try to evaluate their total performance based on the runs they scored and the runs they gave up," Larabee said.
The basketball comparison is points scored and points allowed. Running the numbers for both teams, Joey says the math is razor close.
"And that would give you a matchup expectation of MSU winning 50.4% of the time," he said.
But, that's just on a theoretical neutral court, and Joey says that only gets you so far when predicting real games.
"If we were sitting here today and we knew 100% if they played an exactly average opponent, this is what they would score, and this is what they would give up, this would be a remarkably strong predictor of season-long performance," Larabee said. "But we don't, and that's why March Madness is March Madness."
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