NCAA Tournament Plays: Survive the Madness Special
FanDuel has rolled out the biggest college basketball first place prize in the history of the game this year with the Survive the Madness special. It is an incredible tournament with a $100 dollar buy in that keeps it attainable for the smaller players while still boasting a big enough prize pool to attract even the biggest players. The great part of it is that it is a survivor tournament, which means you do not have to beat the entire 2869 other entries all at once, but you only have to be in the top 1,200 the first day, 550 the second day, 200 the third day, 64 the fourth day, and 32 the fifth day. Once the tournament is trimmed to 32, all finishers will earn at least $700 dollars – a 7x investment on the original $100 with the bonus of playing for a $40,000 top prize. In addition, the top 550 will over double your money, so a two-day win streak is going to catapult you into cash. I am certain this thing will fill, so get your entries in and we can begin talking about strategy.
Like with all survivor tournaments and 50/50s, the goal is not to differentiate yourself from the field that you either go to the top or the bottom of the field, but to play as conservatively and pick players with and extremely high floor in the first few rounds. Now the first four rounds are not exactly a 50/50, so you will need to be just a bit more aggressive with the picks but you still will need to keep the floors high on all of your players. The fifth day is a pure 50/50 and the last day is when you will need the best team you have assembled all week. In this article, I will begin with talking about some plays for Thursday that have extremely high floors and affordable prices to help get you through those first couple of days of the bracket.
High Dollar, High Floor Studs
When we are looking for these guys, we are not only looking for players who have a high floor, but players with massive upside. Anyone who has played CBB DFS knows that if you can peg the 50 point fantasy performer on a given slate and don’t have around three single figure guys on your roster, you are probably going to advance in this tournament.
Jordan Mickey (LSU, $8,100) – You may look at Mickey’s last few games and think “Why would I take him? He has one 30 point game in his last six.” That is what I am hoping a lot of people are thinking and that his ownership stays low. If you look, he has a 35 PPG average on the season, as he was an absolute monster during the middle part of the year. His price used to be around $10,000 consistently until the last two weeks when he has ran into foul trouble and a shoulder injury. While you will want to look around for news on the shoulder, he looks to be good to go for this game. Mickey is a lock as a pro prospect and has one of the biggest block upsides on the board with a 9.4 block rate. Those blocks, added in with the fact that Mickey was a double double lock earlier in the year, give him 50 point upside and around a 25 point floor when healthy. Mickey is the cheapest we have seen him in a very long time, and will be a staple in my lineups, assuming the reports on his shoulder continue to stay positive.
D’Vauntes Smith-Rivera (Georgetown, $7,900) – DSR, as I call him, has been on a massive run of scoring in the last few weeks, continually putting up 30 fantasy points each and every game. His price dropped on FanDuel from $9,000 to $7,700 after he missed the last game of the regular season (my theory was rest although it was called an ankle injury). His price still has not recovered, and he makes one of the best plays of the day. Eastern Washington is a chic upset pick because of their ability to create turnovers and push the pace by making threes, but all that is going to do is push Smith-Rivera’s value through the roof with their high tempo, weak transition defense. DSR has a 25% shot percentage coupled with a 122 offensive rating against a team in Eastern Washington who really struggles to defend the perimeter. He is one of my favorite plays, as I am looking at this as a 25 point floor with 40 point upside.
D’Angelo Russell (Ohio State, $10,300) – Russell is the highest priced guy on the board, but for good reason. In NBA, if you can find the high priced stud who goes off and have enough value to make the rest of your roster decent, you are essentially a lock to cash. It’s nearly the same in college, although the studs are more prone to duds than in NBA. That is not entirely true with Russell, as he has a Westbrook-like usage rate with a 30% shot percentage, a 30% assist percentage and a 15% defensive rebounding rate. He is the only guy on Ohio State who can put the ball in the bucket on a consistent basis, and they will look to him over and over against VCU. Russell is a safer option than Mickey, but they have similar upsides, and with Weber out for VCU I am not that worried about the press causing a lot of turnovers for the future lottery pick.
Safe, Consistent Mid-Range Options
As you cannot pick all of the best players who have the biggest price, you will need to either have some great mid-range value and a lot of them, or have some punt plays which we will get to shortly. The mid-range options really need to get you a consistent floor of 20 with 30 point upside and I usually look for underpriced high usage guys here.
Steve Mondou-Missi (Harvard, $6,700) – While Saunders’ price for Harvard is through the roof, and for good reason, Mondou-Missi is their clear #2 option. He is their best rebounder at a 22% defensive rate and has a 22% usage rate to boot. He is not a great offensive player but is athletic enough to back it up with a 6% block rate, which is great for FanDuel usage. While not being a great matchup against a solid North Carolina interior, this is projected to be an up-tempo game for Harvard, in fact, the 66 possessions projected would be the fastest game since a 75-73 win over Princeton on January 30th. Possessions mean opportunities, and opportunities mean value.
Nick Lindner (Lafayette, $6,100) – The four-guard setup on FanDuel really limits your abilities to field a guard-heavy team, but Lindner should be in consideration despite playing on a 16-seeded Lafayette team which is one of the biggest underdogs of the opening round. If Lindner was on a different team, he would be priced around $8,000, as he has comparable tempo free stats with a 30% assist rate and a usage rate which has been near 30% for the last two months. The overall season numbers are deceiving – this is a guy who has taken over the offense for his team and will get his shots in this one. Vegas has the Leopards at 61 points and someone is going to have to score for them.
Brandon Ashley (Arizona, $7,300) – Looking more towards the high side of the mid-range plays here, Ashley is on an Arizona team which is one of the highest scoring of the night and should have no problems dispatching Texas Southern. The Tigers are extremely short and have no one one their roster who can legitimately match up with the length and athleticism of Ashley. Ashley has been playing so well lately with a floor of 25 in the last five games that I do not see how they do not just dump the ball to Ashley in the post and let him go to work. None of the Arizona players are a bad gamble – they should all provide a reasonable floor in this game and should all be able to score at will. The question is who gets the most opportunities?
Solid Upside Punt Plays (Who Won’t Tank Your Roster)
Stars and scrubs is a viable option in the NBA, and definitely viable in college hoops too. While you will need a stud who rarely disappoints in college for this to be a solid option, you also need a pricing mistake or a big injury to cause an opportunity available for one of these guys. In my extremely low priced options, I am looking for someone who will be on the court a good amount of minutes and has the consistency when out there to rarely get less than 15 fantasy points. As I use a 4x value system on FanDuel, a $4,500 min priced player is going to need to produce 18 fantasy points regularly.
Bogdan Bliznyuk (Eastern Washington, $4,500) – There are a lot of $4,500 options on this slate and generally all of them are terrible. Sorting through these guys is like finding a needle in a haystack, but Bliznyuk is a diamond in the rough. He does not start for Eastern Washington but is always one of the first guys off the bench and has a 20% usage rate while on the court and a 20% defensive rebounding rate. They have been using him a little bit more lately with 26 and 28 minutes in the last two conference tournament games, and he has produced. He has almost a 120 offensive rating and has shot 53% from 3 on the year, which Eastern Washington will need to take out Georgetown. There is risk involved here like any min price play, but Bliznyuk is as good as any of them.
Tosin Mehinti (UAB, $4,600) – Mehinti has been an enigma this year. There are games where he looks incredible and gets a lot of playing time, and games where he is completely lost and all he does is foul out there. He has a decent block upside, which is nice for a min-price guy, and he shares time in the frontcourt with William Lee who has found himself a spot at $7,300 and therefore unplayable. Mehinti is my choice here even against the solid defense of Jameel McKay, as Mehinti has rare 30 point upside at this price point and is relatively safe with a 10 point floor if he stays out of foul trouble. I am not a fan of the matchup for UAB, but they do get a tempo boost against this fast Iowa State squad.
Deverell Biggs (Texas Southern, $5,400) – At first glance, I would really not like to take anyone from a 16 seed, however like with Lindner, this price is an error to me it seems. Biggs was a Nebraska recruit, so he does have the ability to take on major conference talent, but obviously playing at Texas Southern he is a risk against one of the best defensive teams in the country in Arizona. Biggs missed almost half the year with an injury but plays 30 minutes generally and has proved he has 30 point upside. I would rather him be a little bit cheaper but he certainly is not a horrible filler with a 25% shot percentage, 16% assist rate 11% rebounding rate and 3.5% block rate on the season.
There you have it – Catch the full breakdown of games on FanDuel in the incentives content at RotoGrinders.com and you can catch me on twitter as well with questions @Bronzesword.