Welcome to my Boot Camp-CBB series. With this article series it is my goal to help you grow your CBB DFS game by leaps and bounds. Over the course of this series I will be discussing what my process typical looks like, along with things such as what stats to look at, how to break down Vegas totals and spreads, what I look for in return from a price point, individual on-court matchup data, KenPom breakdowns, and how to use Twitter to your advantage.
A little about myself for those who have not been around our Slack Chat channel, I go by Razzle11 on most DFS platforms and have been grinding out DFS for around 6 years now. When CBB was around prior to this iteration returning, I was a top ranked CBB player according to RG Rankings. I have an extreme passion for college sports and I used that to find my way into a content providing position with the DK Playbook. I wrote NFL, MLB, CBB and CFB for both the Playbook and a site formerly known as DFSreport.com.
Enough about me, let’s get into Part 1 of the series. For this part I will be discussing a general overview of CBB DFS. I will touch on things such as contest selection, the differences between Fanduel and DraftKings, and what return I am looking to get from a certain price point. Let’s get started!
The first thing I want to go over is my general overview of CBB from a fantasy perspective. When it comes to the play of 17-23-year olds at the college level, there is rarely any consistency to count on or fall back on. These are kids trying to grow as athletes and there are certainly a ton of growing pains along the way. Minutes can become extremely volatile as some of these teams are littered with elite high school players and when a guy is having a bad night, a coach can certainly replace him with another highly touted player.
In CBB, with the game being two 20-minute halves, each player is allowed just 5 fouls as opposed to the 6 that they receive at the NBA level. If you scroll through twitter and find the guys that play a decent amount of CBB DFS, you will come across constant complaints about coaches sitting guys with foul trouble in the first half and then that player finishing with that same number of fouls once the game is over. Foul trouble can become the biggest hinderance to the possibility of a very nice DFS night for your lineups. The goal will be to learn which coaches give players with 2 first half fouls more of a leash so that we do not lose out on 4-5 minutes of action.
A couple observations that I have made over the years of playing CBB DFS is that you want to try and have exposure to a team’s best FT shooter. The reason for that is that in late game situations of a close game, some opponents start to commit fouls and send guys to the line with under 2 minutes left in the game. The college level of basketball allows a 1 and 1 when an opposing team has committed 7 team fouls for that half and then it goes to the 2 FT’s once that team has gotten to 10 team fouls. I try to target the PG/SG for the home team that is favored by just a few points and if those options are a bit weak, I will look at road teams favored by just a few points. The goal is to nail the fact that it’s a close game late and that the opposing team will have to rack up fouls to try and extend the game.
The other observation is that I believe it’s best to pay up for Forwards as opposed to Guards. Now I understand this isn’t 100% always the case, as each slate will dictate where the spots are to spend up. However, a general rule of thumb that I follow is that the Forwards are both safer and generally have a bigger edge over their opponents based on height, etc. The reasons that I feel they are safer are basically that they tend to turn the ball over less than the guards (more important on FD) and that rebounds are easier to predict than assists. Assists are generally something that is very limited at the college level, whether it be due to score keepers or just talent level on a particular team.
When it comes to the differences between the FD and DK CBB DFS product, the main thing to pay attention to is the fact that FD penalizes a point for each turnover while DK penalizes just a half-point. Turnovers make a huge difference at the college level and we need to make sure we are prioritizing more ball security on FD. The other major difference is that on FD you select 4 guards, 3 forwards and 1 utility, as opposed to the 3 guards, 3 forwards and 2 utility spots on DK. A smaller thing to point out is the fact that DK awards a half point per 3-pointer made, while also adding double-double and triple-double bonuses, which definitely help the forwards even more. Another piece to be wary of is the fact that there is late-swap on DK, while FD does not allow late swap for CBB.
As far as contest selection, the important thing is to pay attention the names posting H2H action on each site and what contests some of these individuals are max entering from a GPP standpoint. The prize pools for CBB contests can differ from night to night which makes some of the GPPs worthy of only seeing 1 or 2 lineups from us. We also need to be very aware of possible overlay as CBB is a niche DFS sport and if there are other things going on, many contests can find themselves neglected. There are a number of names that I have respect for in the CBB community and will do my best to avoid battling it out with them on a nightly basis in cash games. I will not provide that list here, however after spending a few days in the lobbies, you should be able to pinpoint a few of them.
The last piece of the puzzle for Part 1 is what we want in return for paying $X for a particular player. We know that not all nights are going to have the same scores taking down GPPs or winning our cash games, so predicting what we want on a nightly basis becomes tough and ultimately is based on the slate and how tight the individual player pricing is. As a blanket statement, I am looking for my DK player to return me 4.5-5x on their price and on FD I am looking for 4-4.5x return. It would be ideal if every player could hit this, but truth be told it’s not quite that simple. Generally, the higher priced the player, the lower return number I am looking for and the lower priced player should be able to return me a higher number.
With the way the pricing has been to begin the season, you can certainly look to receive 4-4.5x from each of your players on FD and feel good about that number. However, with the pricing ceiling of some of the elite players on DK, it is nearly impossible to expect a CBB player to go for 5x+ on his $10-11K salary. Do not get me wrong, we have definitely seen elite CBB players go for 50-60+ in a given night, however, it is rarer than the NBA level.
There you have it, the beginning to CBB Boot Camp. It wasn’t that bad, was it? Grab a shower, a nice cold beverage and kick back for some basketball! I will be putting out Part 2 soon as we will discuss Vegas totals/spreads, Using Twitter to find news and what to do with injury news, and give an overview of websites to utilize for information.