With football season starting to wrap up, it is time to start to turn my mathematical focus to the hardwood. While I have developed my own methods for predicting the point spreads of football games, I believe that the efficiency-based methods used and refined by Ken Pomeroy are the current gold standard in basketball analytics. Over the past few years, I have developed my own methodology using Kenpom data to try to answer interesting questions regarding college basketball.
As this weekend marks the beginning of Big Ten basketball, it seems like a good time to take a closer look at what the current Kenpom data can tell about which team(s) might be hoisting a Big Ten championship banner at the close of the regular season.