I won 1st place in Classic Rare Underdog, here's how I did it

After snagging my first W of the season just a couple weeks ago with my In Season Rare Contender 1st place, GW 13 came along with another W, this time with a rather surprising Classic Rare Underdog win. As a rule of thumb, underdog competitions are in the bottom of my priorities. Rewards are usually underwhelming (T1 for 1st place is good, but I'd expect a Star) and it is rather hard to strike gold with these low cap guys, but this week I decided to give it a higher priority.

I look at underdog as a place to throw some good plays, but ones with a high risk to them which I wouldn't want to take on in my main Champion lineups. So here's the breakdown of each play.

Believing in the guards

The best play in this lineup, which actually turned up to be the best play of the entire GW, was Bulls guard Ayo Dosunmu who put up +42 over his cap with a base score of 72, coming in as 78 with the XP bonus for me. I knew starting PG for the Bulls, Coby White (which was in my winning In Season Rare contender lineup), was going to sit out but still had a hard time believing Ayo could go off with his slow start to the season, but that's a risk I did agree to take on in Underdog.

Seth Curry was also a risk for Underdog. With LaMelo and Tre Mann out for the Hornets all eyes were on Micic to deliver, and I felt like people might be sleeping on the guy who shares a last name with the best shooter of all time. Brogdon came back swinging from his injury a couple weeks ago so I thought I could go with him as well, although he did eventually put up -2 points under his cap.

Big guys filling in

Mason Plumlee was a hot play heading in to the GW knowing Nurkic is out, but that wasn't going to be the first time Plumlee would start for the Suns, with the last couple of times being a bit underwhelming, making him too a play for Underdog. He eventually put up +12 over his cap for a base score of 27.

Marvin Bagley was actually a play I was excited about. With a cap of 4 I felt like the risk-reward ratio is pretty good, and luck turned up to be on my side when he got the starting role against the Mavericks, playing 24 minutes and putting up +28 with a score of 32. With these big guys, it's not out of touch for them to score somewhere in the 1 point-per-minute range, so if a low cap big suddenly gets some minutes, most likely he'll be a good play.