Welcome to the Official 2017 Fantasy Draft, held by the best DIII Tennis Bloggers out there. There are people that are new to this whole thing, so that usually means I have to explain some stuff to you about the draft. Let’s go through these important notes:
Important Note #1: This draft will NOT be scored this year. This is a common misconception about the draft. Due to uneven schedules, scoring is simply not possible.
Important Note #2: We do this draft in order to generate discussion about players and have a fun way of interacting with you guys about player values. Basically, it’s a way to understand player values to a team at this very point in time. Additionally, we will hold polls and just do some general analysis for pride in our teams. Everyone knows my team is better than D3Northeast’s team, for example. (Editor’s note: it’s not)
Important Note #3: Projected lineups are determined by us, through lots of research and some player/coach feedback. Trends we saw at ITAs as well as last year are incorporated. D3Midwest intelligently took a picture of the projected lineups for us so you can find those posted at the top left of the site, in the Blogroll section, or here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-Vx-ZBYdzX2TGY2X0YtSWp6UjJmZHdGQlZTSFdOcmhOeUxz/view
Okay, that’s it for important notes. Onto some rules, then the draft selections. I’m going to steal an excerpt from last year’s article because I don’t like hashing out rules all that much.
RULES
Well, boys and girls, the fantasy draft is not going to be scored. It will not be like your regular fantasy league. The exercise is this – we have chosen 10 writers/readers to participate in the “draft.” Participants will act as “coaches” to their teams, however they will not have any players to start. That is where the fantasy portion of this draft comes in. We will be drafting players, by position, in a snake fantasy format. Basically, it’s like we put every single player in DIII in the same pool and now we all have our choice, as long as the player hasn’t been picked already, of course. What this does is creates a fun element for our participants to create a “Dream Team” in their eyes. Who do they want on their team? Do they want the grittiness of Rafe Mosetick at #1 Singles, or do they want an up and coming freshman like Jonathan Jemison instead at #2 singles? There are plenty of decisions to be made.
To make sure that teams don’t load up on #1 singles players from across the country, we will be drafting a total of 12 positions. Each team will draft their #1-6 singles players as well as backups for each position. As you can imagine, we will be projecting out lineups for the rest of the year. Obviously, there will be some discrepancies and assumptions in this, but for the most part it will even out the talent for each team. It’s up to the drafters to find the anomalies and the sleepers in our projections to field the best team. Additionally, a team can draft a player that is listed as lower than #6 in the lineup and slot him in as the #6 player on their team. They can only utilize this rule in the second half of the draft (Rounds 7-12). You will see this rule invoked by D3Midwest as he takes Luke Tsai with the first pick of the 7th round.
Okay, got it? Here are the results. You can also click the results link on the top left of the page.
The draft order this year was as follows. Since this is a snake draft, this gets flipped every other round.
- D3 Midwest
- D3ASouth
- D3Northeast
- D3Regional
- D3West
- RegionalNEC
- D3Tree (Guest!)
- Adam Van Zee aka D3Central
- The Guru
- RegionalAS
Now, The Guru went above and beyond and provided us with some fast facts about the draft for your reading pleasure.
Fast Fast Fast Facts
- 5 teams had a player selected in the first 10 picks
- 11 teams had a player selected in the first 30 picks
- 21 teams had a player selected in the first 60 picks
- 35 teams had a player selected
- All of Chicago’s players went in the first 20 picks
- All of Emory’s players went in the first 50 picks
- CMS had four players taken in the first round and Chicago had three
- Every player selected in the first 20 picks was from a team in the top 8 pre-season power rankings
- Ben Rosen was the only player in the first 53 picks from a team outside the top 16 in the pre-season power rankings
- The UAA and NESCAC both had 23 players selected in the first 60 picks
- Broken down by the 4 regions
- NE: 48
- West: 28
- Central: 24
- AS: 20
- D3AS selected 7 players from the AS (by far the most of anybody and more than ⅓ of the total AS players selected. No other team has more than 2 AS players.)
- D3Central selected only 3 players from the Central (fewer than Midwest who led the way with 4)
- D3NE selected 7 players from the NE (not nearly as many as the 10 NE players drafted by the Guru)
- D3West selected 5 players from the West (the most of any drafter)
- 22 freshmen selected, more than the entire AS region.
- 8 teams had all of their projected starters selected: Bowdoin, Emory, Middlebury, Chicago, CMS, CMU, Wesleyan and Amherst
- Chicago led the way with 8 total players selected
- 3 other teams had more than their projected starting singles lineup selected: Emory, Middlebury, and CMS all had 7 players drafted.
- There were 13 freshmen taken in the first 60 picks
What Next?
That’s a draft that’s packed with fun right there. What do we do next? Well, I’d love to open up the comments for discussion. Who should have been picked? Which picks were awful? Which picks were great, other than mine? We had a lot of people comment last year with their thoughts and I’d love for that to happen again. In regards to articles, we’ll be releasing a series of articles breaking down our picks and eventually culminating with a Team vs. Team analysis, similar to what we did last year. Should be a fun and adventurous ride – I’m excited to see which team you think is best. And with that, ASouth, OUT.
Why wasn’t case westerns Josh Piatos chosen? He would have been my number one pick. His game is absolutely scintilating!!
I looked at where the top 20 players in this year’s draft were taken last year, just to try to judge how their perceived value has changed. Transfers and freshmen excluded!
#1 Jemison – 20
#2 Mork – 66
#4 Leung – 39
#5 Pei – 15
#6 Hull – 19
#7 Brenner – Not Selected
#10 Macey – 23
#11 Chua – 7
#12 Wolfe – 47
#14 Wu – 10
#16 Levine – 37
#17 Urken – Not Selected
#18 Liu – 4
#19 Roddy – 16
D3Midwest – Why Ben Rosen with guys like Metzler, Yeung, and rosenvasser on the board? What I am I missing on Rosen? I know he is good but having the individuals runner up from last year or one of the best freshman seems better
Great question! Ben Rosen could end up being the steal of the draft. I first took notice of Ben when he won the prestigious Silver Ball this past summer at the USTA National Open Men’s Singles Grass Court Championships (beating Pepperdine player/former blue chip/UTR 13.11 Stefan Menichella along the way). I then found out that he had an incredible sophomore season at Bates, with only a few losses, almost all at the hands of top players in either 3 sets or super breakers (plus he beat CJ Krimbill at Nats). Given that he was playing #5 for Bates the year before, I was enthused by his exponential growth and felt he could make yet another leap this year. Plus, he had a solid year at #1 doubles, so I could slot him at 1 or 2 doubles on my fantasy team. The reason people forgot about him in the fall is because he studied abroad. The biggest question with guys that study abroad is will they actually play a decent amount/are they going to be back to normal form in the Spring. Ben Rosen has answered that question throughout the past few months. In mid-November, he played a Futures event in Spain a pushed a player with a UTR over 13 to three sets. He ended up doing the same thing at the USTA National Men’s Open in December.
It’s interesting that you bring up Metzler and Leung because I considered both of them, as they will have phenomenal seasons. I didn’t want to take a gamble on a freshman for #1 singles, so that’s why I didn’t pick up Rozenvasser.
Well great, I thought your team looked great except for that pick and with that inside information on Rosen, I like that pick too. I like your team the best as well as D3 northeasts team, although you never know how the amherst freshman will go over the whole season, so I pick your team as the favorite.
Off topic, I herd the format of Ojai is different then previous years in regards to what players get in. Do you know anything of that?
Why did most bloggers saved their #1 singles till round 6? and then theres lubomir, chua, manji and… rosen? thought he didnt do much/ play in the fall
Based on what happened last year, there are a lot of good #1’s available from lesser teams (Leung, Metzler, etc.) in addition to the great players who play #1 for the best teams (Cuba, Chua, Manji), so it’s better strategy to fill our your lineup with players from the top teams while they’re still available.
Copy and pasting my response to the other commenter:
Ben Rosen could end up being the steal of the draft. I first took notice of Ben when he won the prestigious Silver Ball this past summer at the USTA National Open Men’s Singles Grass Court Championships (beating Pepperdine player/former blue chip/UTR 13.11 Stefan Menichella along the way). I then found out that he had an incredible sophomore season at Bates, with only a few losses, almost all at the hands of top players in either 3 sets or super breakers (plus he beat CJ Krimbill at Nats). Given that he was playing #5 for Bates the year before, I was enthused by his exponential growth and felt he could make yet another leap this year. Plus, he had a solid year at #1 doubles, so I could slot him at 1 or 2 doubles on my fantasy team. The reason people forgot about him in the fall is because he studied abroad. The biggest question with guys that study abroad is will they actually play a decent amount/are they going to be back to normal form in the Spring. Ben Rosen has answered that question throughout the past few months. In mid-November, he played a Futures event in Spain a pushed a player with a UTR over 13 to three sets. He ended up doing the same thing at the USTA National Men’s Open in December.
wow, excellent extensive research. Now im looking forward to his battles against cuba, zykov, leung etc!
Saw Kaplan of Amherst play at the MIT Invitational and was pretty impressed. Certainly someone who could make an impact this year. I also thought Carstens of Bowdoin looked dangerous and much-improved over last year.
i.e. Kaplan and Carstens could have been good picks.
Absolutely true! The reason I chose Vanezis (Midd) over them is because I feel more confident that he’ll get his chance to start. Amherst is insanely full of talent, and Bowdoin has a fairly established top 5. However, I agree that the ceiling for Kaplan and Carstens is quite high