Mid-Major Madness Fantasy Basketball Challenge

So last year, there was something missing here at Mid-Major Madness, and that was fantasy basketball.

Oh, don't think we forgot our Mid-Major 5, the handful of players that made ESPN's experts look like they were watching some other game all season long. When you don't pick the players who are really going to be the most productive over the course of the last two months of the season, you are just asking not to win your silly bet.

But almost all of those guys who took to the court for the Mid-Major 5 are gone, and we didn't really want to let our basketball knowledge go to waste. So this season, we have a few of the Mid-Major Madness writers who got together to assemble fantasy teams for the coming season.

Here is how it will work:

• Each writer has 12 players picked from the schools that we cover, all of whose stats will count in the standings.
• Each player will get one point for each point, rebounds, assist, block and steal they accumulate over the course of the year.
• There will be no negative points.
• If a player is injured (I hope not) and out for the season, that writer will get to replace them on the roster with any of the players still out there for the rest of the season.
• There will be no other transactions; the draft is final.

I ran the teams last night, and we will be tracking them all season long at Fantrax.

Here are the rosters, in order of round drafted:

Rubit's Cube (Ben Miraski): Augustine Rubit, South Alabama; Javon McCrea, Buffalo; Shawn Long, Louisiana-Lafayette; Wesley Saunders, Harvard; Kendrick Perry, Youngstown State; Z Mason, Chattanooga; Derrick Barden, Northern Colorado; Elfrid Payton, Louisiana-Lafayette; David Laury, Iona; Saah Nimley, Charleston Southern; Chris Udofia, Denver; George Beamon, Manhattan.

Luck of the Ireland (Daniel Bogle): Dwayne Evans, Saint Louis; Juvonte Reddic, VCU; Tyreek Duren, La Salle; Tyler Haws, BYU; Treveon Graham, VCU; Jake Odum, Indiana State; Jameel Warney, Stony Brook; Anthony Ireland, Loyola Marymount; Malcolm Miller, Holy Cross; Chase Fieler, Florida Gulf Coast; RJ Hunter, Georgia State; Seth Tuttle, Northern Iowa.

Pine Pones (Parks Smith): Corey Hawkins, UC Davis; Chaz Williams, Massachusetts; Torrey Craig, USC Upstate; DJ Covington, VMI; Jason Brickman, Long Island; Tristan Carey, Longwood; Alec Brown, Green Bay; Langston Hall, Mercer; John Brown, High Point; Travis Bader, Oakland; Lucas Troutman, Elon; Xavier Munford, Rhode Island.

Fightin' Bhullars (Jake Fischer): Jerrelle Benimon, Towson; Kevin Pangos, Gonzaga; Cleanthony Early, Wichita State; Raheem Appleby, Louisiana Tech; Marcus Thornton, William and Mary; Taylor Braun, North Dakota State; Sim Bhullar, New Mexico State; DJ Irving, Boston University; Johnny Dee, San Diego; Cameron Ayers, Bucknell; Siyani Chambers, Harvard; Rod Rucker, UAB.

A couple of notes on the draft:

• Benimon was the only player ranked in everyone's top 10, to give you some kind of idea on how different the rankings really were.
• Evans was ranked No. 1 or No. 2 by all the writers except, well, me.
• Jake had Akeem Williams from UMass-Lowell on his list. I was really hopeful that he was going to get drafted.
• Daniel got his first six players in his list during the draft. That is executing a strategy.
• Parks ranked three players from Oakland. He is really trying to be named an honorary fan.
• Yeah, I used HOOPWAR to rank my guys. Rubit was pretty good last season I guess.