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No. 25 Michigan State hits the road to Lincoln to take on the lowly Nebraska Cornhuskers Thursday night (8:30 FS1). Michigan State needs to get over their road woes and make sure they don’t end up in a hotly contested game against a team that is in the early stages of a program reset under first-year head coach Fred Hoiberg.
Let’s take a look at how these two teams match up from a statistical standpoint and where edges can perhaps be gleaned.
Advanced stats and ranks courtesy kenpom.com.
Overview
Michigan State: 17-9 overall, 9-6 Big Ten
-No. 11 in adjusted efficiency
-No. 18 in adjusted offense
-No. 15 in adjusted defense
-No. 102 in adjusted tempo
Nebraska: 7-18 overall, 2-12 Big Ten
-No. 136 in adjusted efficiency
-No. 141 in adjusted offense
-No. 157 in adjusted defense
-No. 32 in adjusted tempo
I’ll try to be as kind as possible to Nebraska while writing this. They consistently are competitive and occasionally put a scare into good teams. That said, the Cornhuskers are really struggling this year. They have lost nine straight games and haven’t won since January 7. Less than two weeks ago they went on the road and put a scare into Maryland, having a chance to win the game with a last-second shot. They followed that up by getting blown out by 17 at home against Wisconsin. Fred Hoiberg is in his first year in Lincoln and the Cornhuskers are one of the youngest teams in the country. I’m sure the plan is to take some lumps this year and next, with the promise of Hoiberg’s past paying dividends down the road. I expect them to be a legitimate player in the Big Ten in pretty short order, it’s just not happening for them this year. Still, they have the ability to punch above their weight and Michigan State can’t coast through this like Nebraska is a middling mid-major team.
Let’s dive into some specifics.
A note: Four factors is something you will see in these posts a lot. They are four statistical categories that heavily dictate good basketball vs. bad basketball. They are: effective field goal %, turnover %, offensive rebounding %, free throw rate (FTA/FGA). If a team is good at these four things, they are good at basketball.
When Michigan State has the ball
Michigan State Offense four factors: No. 81 in eFG% (effective field goal), No. 97 in turnover %, No. 49 in Oreb%, No. 206 in free throw rate
Nebraska defense four factors: No. 236 eFG% against, No. 170 in turnover %, No. 336 in Oreb%, No. 4 in FTR
OK. So, Nebraska is one of the worst rebounding teams in the country on both sides of the ball. Defensively they allow their opponents to rebound a third of their misses. That is a lot. I don’t feel like this is even a particularly bold prediction, but MSU is going to absolutely crush Nebraska on the offensive glass in this game. This will be a great chance for Aaron Henry and Gabe Brown to get some good mojo going in that aspect of their games. Tom Izzo has been crushing them over their rebounding and this could be a chance for them to feast. One thing Nebraska does shockingly well is not foul. They are fourth in opponent free throw rate, which is obviously excellent. That’ll be interesting to watch, because one of the under-discussed reasons MSU has been struggling lately is their inability to get to the free throw line. As discussed a number of times in this space, free throws are a great way to generate efficient offense and MSU’s free throw rate has been in a steady decline for more than a month. It doesn’t appear as though Nebraska is the team to help them fix that. Still, MSU has massive advantages in two of the four factors and a sizable advantage in a third.
When Nebraska has the ball
Nebraska offensive four factors: No. 238 in eFG%, No. 8 in turnover %, No. 329 in Oreb%, No. 254 in FTR
Michigan State defensive four factors: No. 3 in eFG% against, No. 319 in turnover %, No. 69 in Oreb% against, No. 105 in FTR
I think I wrote something similar about Northwestern’s offense, but imagine if Nebraska couldn’t protect the ball. They might be one of the worst offenses in college basketball if they couldn’t. Fortunately for them, they are, and that means Nebraska will take full advantage of their possessions during a game. That helps because if you can’t rebound, shoot, or get to the free throw line, you need as many chances at the basket as possible. MSU has struggled a touch on the defensive glass, but Nebraska doesn’t pose much of a threat there. A ranking discrepancy of 235 spots in effective field goal percentage doesn’t bode particularly well for the Cornhuskers either. My non-expert opinion is that Nebraska’s best bet is slowing the game down and trying to bog down the MSU offense while hitting a few extra threes. That’s just not how the Cornhuskers play, as we’ll get to.
Other key numbers
Nebraska is one of the fastest offenses in the country. They rank 10th in average possession length on that side of the ball. They go, go, go and go some more. There should be a number of fast-break chances for both teams in this one.
Nebraska ranks 196th in three-point shooting and they take a decent amount of them. 40% of their shots are from deep, yet they only hit them at a 32.7% clip.
Nebraska ranks second-to-last in minutes continuity. Nebraska only has 4% of its minutes from last season played by the same player in a similar role.
Nebraska is the third-worst free throw shooting team in the country, making only 60% of their attempts from the line.
Nebraska is the fourth-worst team at getting their shots blocked. A staggering 13.1% of Nebraska’s shots get blocked. For a team that takes 40% of their shots from three, that is a shocking stat.
Conclusion
Folks, Nebraska is bad. They just are. They sit with Northwestern as by far the two worst teams in the Big Ten. In their last four home games they’ve kept the final margin in single digits just one time, an eight-point loss to Indiana. They haven’t won since January 7. A win against Michigan State would make their season and I’m sure Fred Hoiberg would love to get one over on his friend Tom Izzo. Michigan State is far and away a superior team, but if they come out flat and struggle to get the offense going on the road, they could easily end up in a dog fight. Rebounding alone should give them enough of an edge to get through this without an A or B game, but it’s probably time for them to start rounding into postseason form. Struggling to a win against Nebraska won’t be doing that. KenPom has this as an 80-70 win for MSU, with an 82% chance of victory.
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