Using Vegas to Win in March Madness Daily Fantasy Basketball

If you want to be successful in playing DFS during March Madness, you have to learn how to utilize Vegas to your advantage. They have so much money coming in during the next two weekends on bets, so they absolutely have to make sure to get the lines as right as possible for this time of year.

If they put that much time, effort, and money into simulating and predicting the games, it would be quite silly not to use their help to win in daily fantasy.

One of the issues with using Vegas for DFS projection purposes is that Vegas predictions (just total points) don't necessarily correlate perfectly with fantasy points (points, three-pointers, rebounds, assists) in basketball. Conversely, for football and baseball, it definitely does.

So we need a way to use Vegas in basketball but incorporate the other factors of fantasy scoring into it.

To do this, we’ll calculate how many fantasy points –- we’re going all DraftKings in this article, by the way –- each team has scored this season. We will then divide that number by their total points (what Vegas projects) to get Fantasy Point per Actual Point (FP/Pt). From there, we can multiply that number by whatever Vegas projects that team to score, and we then have the projected fantasy points for each team, courtesy of Vegas.

Further, we can even use that projection to get individual player projections. For example, if Player X scores, on average, 24% of his team's fantasy points per game, and we already have that number, then bingo -- we've got his projection. Check back before the tournament -- I'll be doing exactly that to give the best DraftKings value plays for the weekend.

Remember that we're measuring fantasy points per actual point here. Baylor is at the top of this list, but they won't necessarily score the most fantasy points. This is very useful to compare teams -- Baylor at 2.07 FP/Pt would be projected to score about the same fantasy points if Vegas projected them for 60 points as Kentucky would be if Vegas projected them for 64 points. Most players will lean Kentucky because Vegas is projected a higher scoring game. Perhaps people will be off a team with a high FP/Pt mark like Baylor in GPPs, and you can get the same "value" for a lower cost or lower ownership.

So without further ado, here’s what each team would score in terms of fantasy points if Vegas projected them for 60 points, a fair median number in college basketball. Obviously, you can use the FP/Pt column to make your own calculations. Also, in the morning before games this weekend, I’ll post a table with Vegas-projected fantasy points for each team, so keep on the lookout for that.