North Carolina among NIT field

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/14/2010 - New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Illinois, Arizona State, Virginia Tech and Mississippi State were anointed as the top seeds for the 32-team 2010 National Invitation Tournament.

The field was revealed Sunday night, approximately three hours after the NCAA Tournament disclosed its participants. Some teams that were on the bubble to make the Big Dance will play in the NIT, hoping to make its final four, which slated for Madison Square Garden on March 30, with the championship game two nights later.

North Carolina (16-16), which won the NCAA Tournament last year, is seeded fourth in the Mississippi State region and will open against William & Mary. This is UNC's sixth NIT appearance and first since 2003. The winner of that game will play the victor of Tuesday's matchup between Mississippi State (23-11) and Jackson State.

UAB is seeded second in that region and will play Coastal Carolina, while South Florida faces NC State in the 3-6 matchup.

Illinois (19-14), which lost in double-overtime to Ohio State in the semifinal of the Big Ten Tournament, will not open at home due to a scheduling conflict. Instead, the Illini will play on the road against eighth-seeded Stony Brook Wednesday.

Arizona State (22-10) starts play Tuesday at home against Jacksonville, while Virginia Tech (23-8) hosts Quinnipiac on Wednesday.

In the Illinois bracket, Cincinnati is seeded second and will take on Weber State in the first round. Dayton is seeded third with a first-round date against Illinois State, while Kent State and Tulsa tangle in the 4-5 meeting.

The winner of Arizona State/Jacksonville will face either Seton Hall or Texas Tech. Ole Miss is seeded second and will face Troy, while Memphis takes on St. John's in the other game in the bracket.

Connecticut gained a No. 4 seed in Virginia Tech's region and will host Northeastern on Tuesday. Rhode Island is No. 2 with an upcoming game vs. Northwestern, and Wichita State is third and will face Nevada.

Penn State won the NIT last year, beating Baylor in the championship game.

Onlinexasino NCAA Basketball Betting News

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.

Betting Football

NFL Football Betting Online

Is there such a thing as a trap game in the NFL?

I once asked that question to Pete Korner, who at the time was office manager and a senior linesmaker for Las Vegas Sports Consultants.

Korner almost ripped my head off. There is no such thing as a trap game, he loudly berated me. It’s a myth. The numbers are made using power ratings, he said.

There are trap games, though. They just might not be what you think. The perception is of a good team, say Philadelphia, laying a small number against New Orleans.

Using the highly-respected power ranking from The Gold Sheet, you’d find the Eagles with a power rating of 4 and the Saints at 8. When you factor the game being played in New Orleans, you could see why the line opened so short at less than a field goal.

For some, this makes it enticing to take the Eagles. That’s not a real trap game, though.

A real trap game, says professional gambler Dave Malinsky, is thinking you’re getting value betting a bad team, which brings us to the Oakland Raiders-Denver Broncos matchup.

The Raiders are +15 in this long-standing division rivalry. Denver is on a short week having dispatched Baltimore Monday. However, the Raiders haven’t covered the spread their last 10 games.

Many bettors don’t trust the Raiders to give a full effort. Few think much of Art Shell and his Oakland’s coaching staff.

So oddsmakers have to do something to make Oakland attractive if they hope to get equal action.

Now Malinsky is a value shopper. But he won’t touch the Raiders even getting more than two touchdowns.

“I try to eliminate the undisciplined, unfocused teams because they’re the ones most likely to suffer the bad beats,” he said.

Near the top of Malinsky’s list of stay-away teams is the Miami Dolphins, who have yet to cover a spread this season.

“Whatever you think of Nick Saban, you have to look at the penalties and turnovers,” Malinsky said.

It’s easy to point out the Dolphins failed to get the money this past week against New England because Olindo Mare missed a field goal and had another field goal blocked. But even though the Dolphins outgained the Patriots, 283-213, they committed eight penalties.

Bad teams not only cost themselves victories, but pointspread covers as well. The Arizona Cardinals and Green Bay Packers are two more examples.

The Cardinals couldn’t have been in a better position this past Sunday, up 14-0 at home against a mediocre Kansas City Chiefs squad. But they couldn’t hold it. The Packers got a push against St. Louis, but also could have won losing by three when Brett Favre fumbled at the St. Louis 11-yard line with 44 seconds left.

“The Packers were in a position to beat Philadelphia, too,” Malinsky said. “But they couldn’t even cover double digits.

“These teams just make mistakes and it costs you … they always will look good from a value standpoint. They really will. But that’s the trap.”

Houston and Tennessee rank among the six-worst teams. Malinsky wouldn’t be afraid to take either of these teams, however, if the price were high enough.

The Texans are bad, Malinsky said, but they have some discipline. The Titans showed they could not only come up with an outstanding game plan, but execute it as well, losing by one to the Colts on the road as an 18 ?-point underdog this past Sunday.

“Jeff Fisher is a worker,” Malinsky said of the Titans coach. “I’m not sure how hard Art Shell wants to work when he gets out of bed.”

Fisher, though, could be out as Tennessee coach after this season. Is he still worth backing in the right spot, with the right price, as a lame duck coach?

“It’s in his nature to keep working hard and not worry about any possible lame duck status,” Malinsky said. “He’s coaching for his resume.”

Note: Monday night game will be picked Monday. Lines used are from football betting lines.