Big Ten Tournament Betting Preview: Michigan State, Indiana Odds, Analysis

The second-ranked and second-seeded Michigan State Spartans (26-5) are +135 favorites (bet $100 to win $135) on the odds to win the Big Ten Tournament at sportsbooks monitored by Odds Shark, behind head coach Tom Izzo, who has earned more wins in it than anybody.

Izzo’s Spartans are 24-14 all-time in the Big Ten Tournament with four championships in the last 17 years, just one reason they seem to be almost annual favorites to win the title no matter where they are seeded after the regular season.

Covering the spread in 11 consecutive games and going 10-1 straight up down the stretch, Michigan State has jumped back up to No. 2 in the country after spending four weeks in the top spot.

Following that reign, the Spartans fell four times in seven games, capped by a three-game losing streak that included a pair of setbacks at home to the Iowa Hawkeyes (21-9) and Nebraska Cornhuskers (14-17).

Iowa finished in a four-way tie for third place in the Big Ten, while only three other teams were better than Nebraska in conference play.

The top-seeded Indiana Hoosiers (25-6) lost 88-69 to the Spartans, starting their current six-game winning streak, as 7.5-point road underdogs on the college basketball betting lines on February 14 in the only meeting between the teams during the regular season.

Indiana led the Big Ten with a 15-3 record, finishing two games ahead of Michigan State, and enters the Big Ten Tournament as the +350 second choice to win it.

The Hoosiers have surprisingly never won the tourney, advancing as far as the championship game only once back in 2001. They lost 63-61 to the Hawkeyes for the title that year.

Speaking of Iowa, no team in the conference fell more toward the end of the regular season. The Hawkeyes dropped all the way down to the No. 5 seed after leading the conference for much of the year, losing five of their last seven games and covering the spread in just one of them, according to the OddsShark College Basketball Database.

Iowa is +700 to win the tourney behind the top four seeds, including the third-seeded Maryland Terrapins (24-7) and fourth-seeded Purdue Boilermakers (24-7), who are both listed at +500.

The sixth-seeded Wisconsin Badgers (20-11) beat the Spartans 80-69 in overtime as seven-point favorites in last year’s Big Ten Tournament championship game before losing 68-63 to the Duke Blue Devils as one-point favorites in the national title game.

The Badgers are 11-2 SU and 10-3 against the spread in their last 13 games and +1100 to repeat.