Daily College Basketball 101: Guide to Success
Basketball is the same sport at any level, but any sports fan knows that college basketball and the NBA are totally different despite similar rules. The same is true of daily fantasy basketball, so while you may understand the pro game, there are some key differences you need to understand if you’re going to dive into the college game.
I do not mean to completely rip off Notorious’ column for the NBA, but I kind of do, because the intro is excellent and can be used for college hoops too.
Familiarize Yourself with the Scoring System
Here’s a breakdown of the scoring for the two big sites.
FanDuel scoring
— Turnovers are negative
— Blocks and Steals are 2 points
DraftKings scoring (updated for the new scoring changes)
— Blocks and Steals are 2 points
— Turnovers (-.5)
— Three-point bonus (.5)
— Double-double and Triple-double bonus
Value System
While using a value system is not 100% necessary for success, using one will help you dearly. Nearly everyone on the RotoGrinders forums understands the value system and uses value terminology.
First, you need to develop a scoring goal that you would like to achieve. For NBA, it could be 250 or 300, but in college basketball, reaching 200 on DraftKings will generally win you most of your games and reaching 240 on FanDuel will win you most of your games. Of course, scores vary night to night and in bigger GPPs, you generally need much higher than those numbers. If you are chasing bigger GPPs, you can easily adjust your value number.
Now that we have determined our scores we would like to achieve, we divide by the total salary ($50,000 on DK) and ($60,000 on FD) and carry the decimal back to one digit. We get 4x for both, so we will use that as our value system. In NBA it is generally accepted that you need more than normal value for your value players and will not need as much from your studs. In college, this is generally not true, as value holds constant throughout the entirety of your roster.
Information
One of the key factors about college basketball: while information in the MLB, NBA, and NFL is prevalent and you can get opinions from everywhere, information is scarce in college basketball, so the player who has the most information is generally going to perform better.
There are multiple ways I go about getting information. I watch games, I follow many, many beat writers on Twitter, I watch as many games as I can, and I spend about 30 minutes to an hour every day just Twitter searching players names to come up with what I find. The college beat writers do a very good job, and while they aren’t as mainstream, a lot of times the information is there and you just have to find it.
It’s a Small World
College hoops is a niche sport, most likely the smallest in November. However, in February and during the tournament, the number of players grows to a greater level than NHL and there are some solid prize pools to be had at the end of the road. It helps to play throughout the whole year to understand how trends are going, but if you cannot, do not fret, I will have analysis up for the rest of the year and into the big March Madness tournaments. For it being such a small sport, you recognize the same names over and over again. I generally will not grab anyone’s games that I view as competent players unless I have a major strategy on how to beat them that night. If you stick around for a while, you can begin to predict your opponent’s rosters.
Tempo
Tempo is used a lot in the NBA, but it is even more prevalent in college. Arkansas and Auburn played a game the day before I wrote this, and Auburn scored in the 80s and Arkansas broke 100 in regulation! On the other hand, on the night I wrote this, Virginia and North Carolina State played a game that ended 51-47. That is essentially half of the points that Arkansas put up in the game before, which could MAJORLY affect fantasy points. Yes, it had something to do with defense, but the Arkansas game had 80 possessions and the Virginia game had 56. To get to 80 possessions and the same fantasy relevance as the Arkansas game, Virginia and North Carolina State would have had to play almost four overtimes. While this is an extreme example, it is proof that pace matters greatly, as the differences between pace and defense are very defined in college.
Injuries
Injuries, just like in the NBA, are important when playing college basketball. Some sports site have updated injuries, but a lot of them are not 100% accurate. College hoops injuries are not as mainstream, and while the local beat writers will know the status of the players, almost every single questionable injury is a game-time call. If a player is questionable in the morning, generally we will not know until the beat writer tweets the starting lineup or an update comes close to game time. If you are lucky enough to be at a game or get a hometown feed, you can see who is in the layup line pregame or dressed out, but the best resource is going to be those beat writers who cover the game for their school. Here at RotoGrinders, we have a list of beat writers who you can start following: head on over to the Twitter News page in the CBB incentives column.
Injuries in college hoops, while important, are not all encompassing like in the NBA. In the NBA, generally every player that goes out there is a quality basketball player and can rack up good stats when they play a lot of minutes. The margins are much smaller than replacement players in college hoops. In college, a star could go down, and while the replacement player is going to get a great boost and will almost certainly be a great play, there is no guarantee that he shoots the ball well, is trusted by the coach to play minutes, or is not just a totally terrible player who will do nothing. You have to be very careful and look at the entire situation before just plugging a “replacement” player in. Also, a lot of times an injury may just shorten up the rotation for the coach and give extra minutes to the other players.
Foul Trouble
College coaches almost all have a habit that I absolutely despise: the two-foul first half auto-bench. If a player picks up two fouls in the first half, even if they are not a foul-committing machine, the coach will sit them for an extended period of time in the first half, and if they pick up the third early in the second they will generally sit them a long period in the second.
With only 40 minutes of action, these extended absences can really hurt your value bottom line on the player. I doubt many NBA folks look at foul issues for players, but in college I constantly look at other teams’ foul drawing rates and certain players’ fouling rates relative to the positions they will be guarding. I also know coaches’ tendencies from watching the games, and while a little concern is not enough to turn me off of a player in a good matchup, certain foul risk could be the deciding factor between two players that I cannot choose between.
Before-Tip Swap Madness
If this is your least favorite part of the NBA, fear not! College basketball has hardly any of this. The only late breaking news is generally going to be known or be too late for you to do anything right before tip. It is always helpful to be there right around the tip in case some strange things happen (like they tend to), but college basketball is light years safer than the NBA. You could make a lineup with no injury concerns at noon, not check back, and feel confident all of your players are playing. Yes, things happen and yes, I have been burned by late scratches like everyone, but college basketball is much, much calmer before tip than the NBA.
Be Patient
In my opinion, college basketball has a much higher variance than the NBA. While it is a sport where you can post one of the highest ROIs of all the sports with hard work, it is also a sport where you are going to have to battle through losing streaks. A lot of the high priced studs are not like Durant/Westbrook/LeBron/Brow and will get you a minimum of 35 with massive upside. You still have to fade their dud games where they can get you a score in the 20s. Value plays often go for under five at times, either due to injury, benching, foul issues, or just not being involved in the offense. Sometimes those plays are highly owned by the best players, and simply don’t work out. This is just how the game works. I would say the variance is closer to MLB than NBA, as you can know the usage rates and all of the tempo-free stats for these players, but game flow and coaching strategies just do not go the way you were expecting. So, if you do not succeed immediately and you are doing your due diligence, do not give up, as it could just be you starting out on a downswing.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed a brief breakdown of the strategies and differences between college basketball and NBA in the DFS world. If you are coming over to play a bit during the NBA All-Star break, have some fun and get acclimated to the game in time for the March Madness tournaments.
If you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them on my twitter handle, @Bronzesword.