Fantasy Wrestling Dark Horses

[SpladleTown]

I’m in an NCAA Fantasy Wrestling League and I’ve been thinking about who I could pick a little later in the draft as dark horses.

Starting at 125, behind the obvious picks of Spencer and Suriano (if he stays 125), I like Sebastian Rivera as a sneaky pick to be a high AA. Any other suggestions?

 

[rmg78]

I’m in an NCAA Fantasy Wrestling League and I’ve been thinking about who I could pick a little later in the draft as dark horses.

Starting at 125, behind the obvious picks of Spencer and Suriano (if he stays 125), I like Sebastian Rivera as a sneaky pick to be a high AA. Any other suggestions?

I do not think Rivera counts as a dark horse or a sneaky pick to be a high AA. He finished 6th last year and is the 2nd highest finisher of people confirmed staying at 125. Lizak to 133, NATO and Cruz graduated, Suriano cannot decide yet.

 

[Gray52]

I’m in an NCAA Fantasy Wrestling League...

I’d like to hear more about this league... scoring, draft, etc... I have a few guys who have been saying for a couple years we should start one. Is there a website?

 

[nerfstate]

It seems like freshman can be a good way to go. I seem to recall Pyles drafting Spencer in a late round last year. You do risk a redshirt, but I bet you can get great mileage out of Gable, or even RBY, etc.

 

[SpladleTown]

I’d like to hear more about this league... scoring, draft, etc... I have a few guys who have been saying for a couple years we should start one. Is there a website?

No website. One guy keeps track of everything and uses Google Sheets and Docs so the group can access everything at anytime. We just use the NCAA tournament for scoring, but we have our live draft like half way through the regular season to allow for adds/drops and trades. Also, when we drafted last year, you don’t know who starters will be at some weights, so that was an interesting twist. For example, I got Rasheed in a late round and also I took PD3 as a last round flyer. At that time he was still possibly going to wrestle for Iowa.

 

[PAwrestling]

I would take RBY as a sleeper. I wouldn't really call it a sleeper though. Kid is a stud.

 

[SpladleTown]

I would take RBY as a sleeper. I wouldn't really call it a sleeper though. Kid is a stud.

Love the RBY pick. But, the fact that our whole league lives in Central PA and loves PSU, makes it less likely that RBY, Teasdale, Berge or Cassar would be the kind of guys you can sneak in late. These guys will know what we have at PSU. At 133, I can probably get good value out of Lizak, DeSanto, T. Wilson. These guys will be all over Gross, Suriano, Fix and even RBY. I’m curious to see if DeSanto can jump levels being at Iowa and having Brands, Lee, Gilman to work out with on the daily.

 

[Dwayne_Johnson33]

Austin O'Connor is a dark horse at 149. Knows how to find ways to win. Very solid in all positions. He beat Heilmann in their wrestle-off last year and Heilmann ended up placing 4th at Ncaa's.

 

[bowandarrow]

Austin O'Connor is a dark horse at 149. Knows how to find ways to win. Very solid in all positions. He beat Heilmann in their wrestle-off last year and Heilmann ended up placing 4th at Ncaa's.

Great call. Strategy wise it'd probably best to load up on sleepers of the weights that are up for grabs right? (like 149).

Love that y'all do fantasy wrestling. I think the FLO guys do it as well. F** stuff.

Edit: Someone like Mason Smith intrigues me... can he finally put it together at NCAAs in a new place?!

 

[LemonPie]

Here's my proposal for a possible season-long fantasy wrestling game

Draft

• 30 Drafted Wrestlers
• 1 starter at each weight (10)
• No more than 4 wrestlers rostered per weight. If a wrestler moves weights, adjust lineup accordingly.
• Open to Disabled List/IR slots

Dual Lineups

• Set dual lineup each week- 1 wrestler per weight
• Each dual week, you select 10 of your 30 rostered wrestlers
• 2 points for every win over Top 12 (current week, FLO ranked) opponents. So if you have Jason Nolf, but he’s facing two unranked opponents that week, might be a good idea to start someone else on your roster who has a chance for a top 12 win (or use waiver wire).
• Open to rewarding bonus points
• Open to change in scoring
• Unlimited amount of times you can use a rostered wrestler

CKLV, Midlands, Southern Scuffle

• Each tournament, you select 10 of your 30 rostered wrestlers for the tournament. 1 per weight
• You may not use 1 wrestler more than once for these 3 tournaments. For example, if you have Zahid Valencia, you can use him for either CKLV or Midlands, but not both.
• Note: This may hurt the draft value for those skipping all 3 tournaments (e.g. Lehigh wrestlers), and it might force you to do some waiver wire shuffling, but NCAAs still a huge points getter, so still lots of value to be had
• Because of things like South Beach duals, I would like to enter both dual and tournament lineups during the weeks of CKLV, Midlands, Scuffle. Keeps some value in those who are skipping tournaments.

Tournaments scoring

• Open to suggestions on scoring.
• Possible example (1st- 20; 2nd- 15; 3rd- 12, etc. etc.)

Conference championships

• No points awarded due to disparity in conferences
• Open to suggestions if disagree

NCAA Championships lineups

• Start 10 wrestlers (everyone eligible for start). 1 per weight
• Total points scored at NCAAs accumulated
• Team with most NCAA points gets 5 additional bonus points

League Winner
Most points at the end of the season

Waiver Wire

• Early each week there would be waiver period.
• Free Agents otherwise

Pros

• Opportunity to go deeper in the talent pool.
• Lots of week-to-week waiver wire activity

Cons

• Keeping up with it every week
• Draft viability

 

[tikk10]

Here's my proposal for a possible season-long fantasy wrestling game

Draft

• 30 Drafted Wrestlers
• 1 starter at each weight (10)
• No more than 4 wrestlers rostered per weight. If a wrestler moves weights, adjust lineup accordingly.
• Open to Disabled List/IR slots

Dual Lineups

• Set dual lineup each week- 1 wrestler per weight
• Each dual week, you select 10 of your 30 rostered wrestlers
• 2 points for every win over Top 12 (current week, FLO ranked) opponents. So if you have Jason Nolf, but he’s facing two unranked opponents that week, might be a good idea to start someone else on your roster who has a chance for a top 12 win (or use waiver wire).
• Open to rewarding bonus points
• Open to change in scoring
• Unlimited amount of times you can use a rostered wrestler

CKLV, Midlands, Southern Scuffle

• Each tournament, you select 10 of your 30 rostered wrestlers for the tournament. 1 per weight
• You may not use 1 wrestler more than once for these 3 tournaments. For example, if you have Zahid Valencia, you can use him for either CKLV or Midlands, but not both.
• Note: This may hurt the draft value for those skipping all 3 tournaments (e.g. Lehigh wrestlers), and it might force you to do some waiver wire shuffling, but NCAAs still a huge points getter, so still lots of value to be had
• Because of things like South Beach duals, I would like to enter both dual and tournament lineups during the weeks of CKLV, Midlands, Scuffle. Keeps some value in those who are skipping tournaments.

Tournaments scoring

• Open to suggestions on scoring.
• Possible example (1st- 20; 2nd- 15; 3rd- 12, etc. etc.)

Conference championships

• No points awarded due to disparity in conferences
• Open to suggestions if disagree

NCAA Championships lineups

• Start 10 wrestlers (everyone eligible for start). 1 per weight
• Total points scored at NCAAs accumulated
• Team with most NCAA points gets 5 additional bonus points

League Winner
Most points at the end of the season

Waiver Wire

• Early each week there would be waiver period.
• Free Agents otherwise

Pros

• Opportunity to go deeper in the talent pool.
• Lots of week-to-week waiver wire activity

Cons

• Keeping up with it every week
• Draft viability

I like a lot of this but it's maybe too ambitious.

I think a 30-round draft is biting off a bit much, but I guess it depends on how many participants make up a league. 10 participants = 300 drafted wrestlers. There are 76 programs and thus 760 starters. A league of 10 would thus exhaust 40% of all NCAA starters. A league of 8 exhausts about 30% of all starters. Even hardcore fans will be mostly guessing once you get past the top 15 in a weight class.

More practical problem I see is one you already noticed--administration. The waiver wire especially requires some degree of automation, or else a diligently fascist micromanager with nothing but time on his hands to coordinate annoying emails and manage spreadsheets.

The other thing that would benefit from automation is the rankings component, since that changes week to week, and there would be confusion as to when wrestler x was ranked in top 12. Well, confusion if it wasn't fully automated.

Wrestlestat could probably do a lot of the type of automation suggested here, but even @andegre is starting off his fantasy component on a smaller scale.

 

[El-Jefe]

If you draft Suriano in a keeper league, do you actually get to keep him the next year?

 

[LemonPie]

I like a lot of this but it's maybe too ambitious.

I think a 30-round draft is biting off a bit much, but I guess it depends on how many participants make up a league. 10 participants = 300 drafted wrestlers. There are 76 programs and thus 760 starters. A league of 10 would thus exhaust 40% of all NCAA starters. A league of 8 exhausts about 30% of all starters. Even hardcore fans will be mostly guessing once you get past the top 15 in a weight class.

More practical problem I see is one you already noticed--administration. The waiver wire especially requires some degree of automation, or else a diligently fascist micromanager with nothing but time on his hands to coordinate annoying emails and manage spreadsheets.

The other thing that would benefit from automation is the rankings component, since that changes week to week, and there would be confusion as to when wrestler x was ranked in top 12. Well, confusion if it wasn't fully automated.

Wrestlestat could probably do a lot of the type of automation suggested here, but even @andegre is starting off his fantasy component on a smaller scale.

Thanks for the feedback. Working on a revision.

 

[bowandarrow]

What if it was a B1G only Fantasy Season, where you can only select a wrestler once during the season. Get points based on dual result (6,5,4,3 etc.) Then could do a draft for B1G tourney & NCAAs -- draft order determined by regular season results.

 

[PSUaggie]

I’m in an NCAA Fantasy Wrestling League and I’ve been thinking about who I could pick a little later in the draft as dark horses.

Starting at 125, behind the obvious picks of Spencer and Suriano (if he stays 125), I like Sebastian Rivera as a sneaky pick to be a high AA. Any other suggestions?

It will be interesting to see how Moisey does at Nebraska this year. It's hard to call a prior NCAA finalist a dark horse but he underwhelmed the last few years at WVU and could be available in a fantasy draft scenario. After that I would look at Patrick Glory. I was considering Glory for a LMS pick except Princeton has its first dual at Iowa, then duals against Lehigh and Okie State plus Midlands. He is likely to have multiple losses by mid January but I think he can AA this year.

 

[andegre]

Just want to chime-in here real quick.

I WILL be starting development for a season-long Fantasy Wrestling feature for WrestleStat very soon (but won't be ready until the 2019-2020 season).

I've already written down some high-level rules for the league. I'll be posting them [projected rules and format] to the message boards in a little while.

Some of the rules/format are close to what LemonPie posted above, but IMO 30 wrestlers per team seems high.

When I do post to message boards, look for the heading "YOU make the rules..."

 

[James P. Whitters III]

David Carr will most likely lose the shirt and be an AA. Degen at 149 will be much improved. Not much help in Cloneland as we we scored three points at the NCAA last year