'Canes and 'Noles duke it out in ACC action
NCAA Basketball Betting Lines
02/11/2012 - Tallahassee, FL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - A battle of Sunshine State foes in the ACC takes place in Tallahassee this afternoon, as the Miami-Florida Hurricanes do battle with the 15th-ranked Florida State Seminoles.
Miami comes in seeking its sixth straight win, as the team improved to 15-7 overall and 6-3 in conference after claiming a 65-49 triumph over visiting Virginia Tech on Thursday night. The Hurricanes have won their last three road bouts as well, the most recent of which being a 78-74 overtime triumph at Duke last Sunday.
Florida State recently had a seven-game win streak stopped in a 64-60 loss at Boston College on Wednesday night, dropping the team to 16-7 overall and 7-2 in the ACC. The Seminoles are a near-perfect 12-1 at home this season, with their only setback at the Tucker Center coming in a triple-overtime affair against Princeton back on December 30.
FSU owns a 38-28 lead in the all-time series with Miami, and the 'Noles have won 10 of the last 11 meetings.
Reggie Johnson scored 15 points, Shane Larkin added 14 and Kenny Kadji chipped in 11 to lead Miami past Virginia Tech earlier this week in south Florida. The Hurricanes shot just 41.4 percent from the field, but held the Hokies to 35.2 percent, and the visitors were guilty of 17 turnovers as well. Miami claimed advantages in points in the paint (24-14) and bench points (19-13), and won the game despite being outrebounded (40-32). Through 22 games, the 'Canes are averaging a healthy 72.1 ppg on the strength of their 44.0 percent field goal efficiency, which includes a 35.9 percent showing from three-point range. Defensively, the team allows 66.9 ppg on typical shooting outputs of just 41.5 percent overall and 33.4 percent from beyond the arc. Miami is -0.6 in rebounding margin, but +1.0 in turnover differential. Durand Scott heads a balanced attack that has four players averaging between 12.0 and 12.6 ppg, with two of them (Johnson and Kadji) making good on better than 52 percent of their field goal attempts.
Florida State is outscoring the opposition by nearly 10 ppg for the season (71.0 ppg to 61.4 ppg), and the team is shooting 45.6 percent from the floor while limiting the enemy to 37.4 percent. Foes have also struggled with their long-range launches, hitting them just 29.3 percent of the time. The Seminoles boast just two double-digit scorers in Michael Snaer (13.9 ppg, 3.7 rpg) and James Bernard (10.3 ppg, 8.5 rpg), although Ian Miller is close to joining the ranks as he nets 9.8 ppg despite coming off the bench and only appearing in 12 bouts thus far. Snaer was high man once again for FSU in its recent clash with Boston College, hitting for 16 points despite a disappointing shooting night (6-of-18), while James and Miller contributed 12 points apiece in the losing effort. As a team, the Seminoles shot just 39.6 percent from the floor, missing 15 of their 20 three-point attempts along the way. BC had the same overall shooting percentage, but 10 of its 19 total field goals were of the three-point variety.
Milwaukee, WI (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The 18th-ranked Marquette Golden Eagles will try to keep pace in the race for the Big East Conference regular-season title, as they entertain the Cincinnati Bearcats today at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee.
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No.1 Kentucky takes act on the road >>
Nashville, TN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - The top-ranked Kentucky Wildcats put their
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SPORTS BETTING - Tennis is an underrated and under-utilized bettors' sport.
Ten years ago, at just about this time, I called Alan Boston in Vegas and left him a voicemail that went something like this (abridged version): "Hey Alan, Chad Millman from ESPN The Magazine calling. I want to do a book about wise guys, you in?"
A couple weeks later I got a message back (abridged version): "I don't know, maybe," Boston said. "Call me and we'll talk about it. But not later today. I got $1,000 on Andre Agassi to win the French Open at 40-1, and he's in the finals."
Here's what happened next (abridged version): Agassi won his tourney. Boston won his $40,000. I wrote sportsbook.
In the ten years since, how much has been wagered on the big-time tennis events? Put it this way: The Nevada Gaming Commission doesn't even track the number year by year because it's so small.
"Tennis makes up about one-tenth of one percent of our take," says Lucky's bookmaking boss Jimmy Vaccaro. "The last big golf major we probably had $100,000 worth of bets. In tennis, we might have written two big tickets."
Tennis' lack of popularity amongst the American bettoratti is no surprise, really. For starters, the biggest sports betting holidays -- the Super Bowl, the NCAA tourney -- are must see TV. People, at least the degenerates I know, plan vacations around watching those events in Vegas sports books.
But Wimbledon? Doesn't exactly reel in the whales. "Seriously, it's the nuts as an event," says Boston. "But who even knows when it's on?"
Here's another reason that helps explain why golf gets traction, something I call "The Bubbe Theory." My Bubbe is pushing 95 and has cataracts so bad that, to her, even the most crystalline Chicago day is mostly cloudy. But she still listens to the Cubs games, and she still calls me in a fit if she disagrees with something Rick Telander writes in the Chicago Sun Times. She's a sports fan. If she doesn't know you, you're just filling a niche. And niche players, even historically good ones like Roger and Raf, don't drive betting volume. Only the highest profile names attract square money, which inflates wagering totals like a shot of saline to the lips. Bubbe, and the public, loved Agassi, tennis' last cross-the-rubicon, mainstream draw. She also has a crush on Tiger. She's given me standing orders to put a sawbuck on the big cat whenever I walk through a sports book (or mistakenly tap into one via my Internet machine.) That explains why the Masters is getting $100K in action at some books while the four tennis majors might not get that combined this year.
This isn't a case of tennis being a difficult sport to bet. In fact, in Europe, it's probably the second most popular sport for gambling after soccer. Granted, as the WSJ football betting last week and The Mag's Shaun Assael examined in even greater depth last year, that might be because gamblers across the pond see it as an easy game to fix. But it could also be because, over there it holds the kind of sway the big two do over here.
Street corners in Spain are peppered with public courts and kids doing their best Raffy impressions. In some war torn parts of Eastern Europe poverty-stricken kids view tennis as an escape route, like football or basketball here. A couple years ago The Mag's Lindsay Berra wrote a great piece about Belgrade's Jelena Jankovic, Ana Ivanovic and Novak Djokovic. They learned the game as kids while bombs were raining down on their homeland. They practiced in drained swimming pools. Not exactly Nick Bolletierri conditions.
In the United States, casual fans think tennis is played four times a year. But on the tightly packed European continent, national interest in homegrown talent runs deep every weekend. Of the ATP's current top 20 players, only two, tennis betting and James Blake, are American. Fourteen are from Europe, representing six different countries.
No wonder fans from Lisbon to Bhudapest get jacked up for the net game, whether it's Wimbledon or a low-level tourney like the Estoril Open in Portugal (congrats to Spain's Albert Montanes for winning that one, btw). Chances are good that someone representing their flag will not only be playing, but have a shot at winning.
And that's all any bettor can ask for.
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