Welcome to another College Basketball season. I will be expanding the content offerings related to College Hoops as I should have more time to dive into doing writing on the slates as they are out there — which hopefully will remain solid as more and more people adapt to the college basketball game.
Starting off though the first month or so of College Hoops can be a wild ride as we adjust to more and more players transferring to new schools, new systems and coaches figuring out their core rotations before conference play kicks off.
But once conference play gets rolling we are better prepared if we follow along with the trends that are going to get set over the next few weeks.
To me there are four things which make the College Basketball DFS product a sneaky great product to sweat and have some fun grinding.
#1 – The slates move along well
Unlike College Football, you aren’t having to deal with an 8 hour sweat because on most nights we have 7pm and 9pm games and everything is wrapped up around 10:30 and by 9:15 you generally know where you stand. DFS fatigue can be a real thing so having a sport you can play without having to invest 6 hours a night into watching the results is a nice refresher at times. Also, another value add to when conference play begins is that you can avoid certain conferences if they just aren’t what you are good at. Some seasons the Pac-12 might cause you headaches or some years its the ACC, none the less the way the schedule breaks down you can avoid playing every single day without losing your finger on the pulse of a given conference that you might be following closer than others. This is how I tell people not to worry about there being “too many teams”.
#2 – Variance
College Hoops has variance more so than NBA hoops. Good players and value chalk players will bust in college more like players “bust” in Baseball or Hockey. The largest reason for this is that they are kids and the talent to make jump shots, stay out of foul trouble or avoid the hot girl in the stands on the road is harder for many players. So you’ll find scenarios where a “how does this guy not hit value” spot winds up missing his value, which makes the product easier to play in DFS.
#3 – Matchups Drive College
Unlike NBA where guys are getting their set minutes and lots of possessions are resulting in guys just going through the motions we have schemes and systems to deal with. Interior men who can play the high post dominate Syracuse’s 2-3 zone, where as other teams 2-3 zones might be more suspect to guys who can manage the baseline better. It’s a benefit to watch teams and understand how the coaches plan to use their rotations. Additionally, most teams will wind up having a 6-7 man rotation as their core, so you really are focused on the starters who will wind up getting the bulk of the usage for each team and in a 40 minute game with fewer opportunities there is even more value in finding those who can excel above expectations because of match-up.
#4 – You can stack games
This is something I will touch on below briefly but it’s actually not as hard to build a lineup if you are in a rush for College as it is for NBA or NFL or even College Football. Game stacking matters beacuse we want higher tempo games and if you are getting a game which goes into OT (much more frequent in college basketball) you get a huge boost over the competition with having a good stack in that game. The range of totals in college basketball is wider than that of pro basketball, so focusing on a game which winds up having lots of possessions (i.e. good tempo) is usually beneficial. Combined with the minutes going to just a few players and you have a good game stack scenario
So what are the best ways to quickly build a lineup?
I tend to look for a game which I want to stack over others and if that exists I then check the pricing on the players in that game. If I can find two mid range players for the team I prefer that will be where I start and then add in 1 or 2 players from the other side. But do not overweight on high priced players in a stack. Your stack game should come from mid range 5500 to 7500 type plays to allow salary flexibility. I also would rarely go over 2 players from a single team and not over 4 players from a single game. Ideally it will be 2&1 and you can do this with two games if the slate warrants it to fill in 6 of your 8 players.
Stick with the game correlation on one offs. Just like you might in football, you can correlate two one offs in the same game together hoping for a pace boost. I find this to be most beneficial when pairing two higher priced contrarian one offs in a game that others are avoiding.
Where does value come from? Just like any other sport. Playing time duh. A guy who gets a spot start is one thing we monitor, but the best value historically for me is finding value at forward. Players don’t shoot as well in college and thus the rebound path for many value players is their easiest way to achieve glory. The second path would be finding a quality three point shooter in a high paced game who has a low price.
Now, none of these are 100% every slate type builds, but those are some simple concepts which I like to follow to build out lineups.
The last one is that you can play your MAIN cash lineup and win single entries in college DFS. The tournaments are small enough usually that in a 150 or less man field you can use the model of building I mentioned above in cash & your single entry tournaments and have success. Early in the season STUDS & DUDS (high $ and value $) tends to work out because pricing is OFF on many spots. As the season moves along, we move more towards a balanced approach to avoid the 8k guy flopping and missing his value target.
College Basketball DFS Model?
Yes, we have a MODEL, with ratings, projections and Optimizer for DraftKings and FanDuel. It is going through some adjustments for the new season to launch but I will be putting together a video introduction later at the end of the first week to discuss how to utilize it to build a lineup without needing an article for advice on research.
For now, all stats are from last season on the model and it will take a week or two to adjust to the new usage information for players. The projections however are based on current rosters. Ratings are weighted off last years information.