Wildcats set up rematch with Kansas in Big 12 title game

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/13/2010 - Kansas City, MO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Jacob Pullen scored 26 points, and ninth- ranked Kansas State gained a spot in the Big 12 championship game with an 82-75 victory over No. 21 Baylor.

Denis Clemente added 24 points and dished out seven assists for the Wildcats (26-6), who set a school record for victories in a season. Next up for K-State is a game against No. 1 Kansas, which posted a 79-66 victory over 23rd-ranked Texas A&M in the other semifinal.

"They've earned the right to play for the championship," K-State coach Frank Martin said. "Now, we've got to go deal with the best team in the country who we've been nose to nose twice before. So it's a great opportunity. KU is great."

Dominique Sutton logged 14 points, 14 rebounds and four steals for the Wildcats, who are trying to win the conference tourney for the first time. They've already lost twice to the Jayhawks this season, including a rough 81-79 defeat in Manhattan on January 30. Now they'll face a team that's won the Big 12 tournament six times.

"We wanted to win the regular season Big 12, and we felt like we lost it at Kansas," Pullen said. "We just want a chance to get a ring. Denis never got a ring, I never got a ring, I don't think Frank got one. I want to get one while we're here. That's our goal right now. We have the opportunity in front of us. That's our opportunity tomorrow."

LaceDarius Dunn scored 26 for the Bears (25-7), who will wait for Sunday to see where they'll be placed in the NCAA Tournament. Ekpe Udoh added 18 points and 11 rebounds for Baylor, which had a five-game winning streak broken. Josh Lomers scored 12 in defeat.

"I think we just stopped executing well," Dunn said. "They really took us out of playing our game doing the things we do well. So hats off to Kansas State."

Clemente drained a three-pointer for a 71-67 lead with 4:10 left, but Udoh responded with a dunk. After Quincy Acy blocked a jumper from Jamar Samuels, Baylor failed on a few attempts to tie the game.

Tweety Carter missed a pair of foul shots with 3:05 left, but Curtis Kelly gave the ball right back to the Bears on a turnover. Carter turned the ball over on the ensuing possession on a Sutton steal, but K-State couldn't widen the margin initially.

Kelly misfired on a jumper, but Sutton came up with a huge offensive rebound. That led to a Pullen three-pointer with 2:02 left and a 74-69 lead. Pullen added a pair of free throws for a seven-point edge, and it was at least a two- possession game the rest of the way.

Baylor led by as many as nine in the first half, at 23-14 on a layup from A.J. Walton with under 11 minutes left. K-State came back with an 11-1 spurt to go in front, but the Wildcats trailed, 37-36, at the break. The Wildcats led by eight in the early stages of the second half.

Game Notes

Carter accounted for six of his team's 18 turnovers...Baylor shot 54 percent from the field, compared to 45.9 percent for the Wildcats...K-State beat Baylor, 76-74, on January 26...Pullen made half of his 10 three-point shots.

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.

College Football Betting Tips From a Pro

While the NFL is the sport wagered on the heaviest, college football betting lines has become more and more popular as people realize it’s a game that can be beat. The NCAA football season gets longer each year with the addition of numerous bowl games and with that comes more opportunities for more money in your pocket, if handled correctly.

Betting on college football is not the same as with the NFL, so make sure you separate the two. Because of the vast number of teams, the parity between college football programs is slight and thus, you are going to see some high numbers in the NCAA. Teams favored by more than 40 points are not uncommon especially early in the season when teams playing their non-conference schedules.

The best advice when trying to tackle these enormous spreads and is to just stay away. A team that is favored by 40 points is favored by that many for a reason while teams getting 40 points are bad enough that they shouldn’t be touched. Set yourself a spread limit. Getting rid of these games will cut down on the number of contests that you need to handicap while staying away from backdoor or front-door covers.

What is a backdoor and front-door cover you ask? A backdoor cover is a team that is getting beat by more than the spread, but scores late to get within that number thus covering the spread. A front-door cover is just the opposite where the favorite scores late and covers the number they are favored by.

These front-door and backdoor covers are common when second and third string players enter games in college football and it can be the worst nightmare for some bettors. These players can also be your best friend, but ask any bettor and he will give you more instances on losing in this situation than winning. It just seems to work out that way even though everything evens out in the end.

College football betting has some of the softest lines of any sport and it’s being able to find these lines that will make you a successful college football handicapper. The NFL and NBA have the tightest lines around and while those sports can be beat by looking at situations and systems, college football doesn’t quite work that way. It’s much more manual, but when done correctly, it’s much more gratifying as well.

Getting into the nuts and bolts of college football means looking at the many stats in order to beat the number. As opposed to pro football, college football is less dependent on situations and angles and more on certain statistics. Rushing offense and defense, pass efficiency offense and defense and turnover margins are huge. These are vital in the NFL, but even more so when it comes to college football.

Being able to run the ball in college football has always been a key factor in the overall success of a team. The same adage also goes for teams who have the ability to stop the run. Putting these two factors together can produce some positive results in a team’s record both straight up and against the spread. These numbers show huge differences in teams and the spread may not take those into effect, which is where the value comes into play.

Passing yardage numbers both for and against can be a misinterpreted statistic. However, pass efficiency has always been one of the best ways to look at a teams’ passing game ability both offensively and defensively. But is it really a true indication of how they perform? I wouldn’t say so since they are raw passing numbers with nothing else taken into consideration.

I use pass efficiency ratings when doing my handicapping but I adjust my numbers based on a number of factors including power ratings, strength of schedules, personnel and injuries. This gives a much better picture of a team’s ability to pass effectively and also being able to defend the pass. Tweaking pass efficiency stats instead of raw passing yards is the key.

Turnovers are the single most frustrating, and at times the most gratifying, aspect of a college football lines, mostly because they are so unpredictable. They are part of the game and most of the time nothing can be done to control them. However, turnovers are contagious and they can carry over from game to game and season to season.

It’s important to know how to forecast these unforeseen events and how to use them to your advantage. You can find ways to give yourself an edge by looking at past histories of teams and coaches and how they have fared in turnover wars in the past. Instead of turnovers hurting you at the wrong times, find ways to use them to your advantage.

As you can see, college football handicapping is very labor intensive and isn’t just based on where teams are ranked in the AP and coaches polls. Experience, coaching and match-ups are all important since unlike the NFL, college teams turn over much more often with new personnel at most positions every single year. Keeping current on this information is vital.

Betting NCAA football can be lucrative if done correctly, but more importantly, it’s just plain enjoyable because it can be beat. College football is one of the best sports to watch with some of the best rivalries taking place in all of sports. The only downfall is that a championship isn’t decided on the field but on a computer-based system that is the Bowl Championship Series. That will change someday and we will all be better off for it.

To visit this online sportsbook got to MySportsbook.com for all your NCAA college football betting needs. Mysportsbook.com online sportsbook accepts Visa and Mastercard credit cards.