The ACC\/Big Ten Challenge commences Tuesday night and the Big Ten is a solid favorite to win the event for the fourth consecutive season. <\/p>\n
As of today\u2019s ratings here\u2019s the list of chances for each Big Ten team to win, ordered from most favorable to least favorable\u2026<\/p>\n
Wisconsin (85%) over Virginia [Wed]
\nMichigan (83%) over N.C. State [Tue]
\nIndiana (84%) over North Carolina [Tue]
\nPenn State (78%) over Boston College
\nIllinois (77%) over Georgia Tech [Wed]
\nNorthwestern (76%) over Maryland [Tue]
\nMichigan State (64%) over Miami [Wed]
\nMinnesota (55%) over Florida State [Tue]
\nVirginia Tech (55%) over Iowa [Tue]
\nDuke (64%) over Ohio State [Wed]
\nClemson (67%) over Purdue [Wed]
\nWake Forest (68%) over Nebraska [Tue]<\/p>\n
The Big Ten has eight teams favored and the ACC\u2019s four favorites are not strong favorites by any means. In fact, who had Wake Forest as the ACC’s best chance for a win?<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the graphical breakdown of how many games the Big Ten can expect to win.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Add it up and here\u2019s what you get for outcomes\u2026<\/p>\n
Big Ten win: 73.4%
\ntie: 16.4%
\nACC win: 10.2%<\/p>\n
Based on these simulations, there\u2019s a 0.15% chance of a Big Ten sweep while just one out of a million simulations resulted in the ACC winning all 12 games. <\/p>\n
It should be pointed out that this analysis may overstate the Big Ten\u2019s chances in a few ways. For one, the injury ledger leans against the Big Ten as Penn State\u2019s Tim Frazier and Michigan State\u2019s Gary Harris are out, while the worst absence on the ACC side is North Carolina reserve P.J. Hairston. (Although Penn State performed quite well without Frazier in a win over Bucknell over the weekend.) Indiana and Wisconsin are probably overrated by anywhere from 3-5 points here, and Maryland\u2019s underrated by 2-3 points. <\/p>\n
But the possibility of a tie is what makes the Challenge particularly challenging for the ACC. They have to be better than the Big Ten by two games to win outright and that\u2019s a lot less likely than to happen for the ACC than it is for the Big Ten. Remember this is like the Ryder Cup. In the case of a tie, the previous champions retain the trophy. Although a tie would have to be considered a moral victory for the ACC.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The ACC\/Big Ten Challenge commences Tuesday night and the Big Ten is a solid favorite to win the event for the fourth consecutive season. As of today\u2019s ratings here\u2019s the list of chances for each Big Ten team to win, ordered from most favorable to least favorable\u2026 Wisconsin (85%) over Virginia [Wed] Michigan (83%) over […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=369"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/369\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kenpom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}