2010 Southland Conference Tournament Preview

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/08/2010 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Eight Southland Conference teams will gather in Katy, Texas this week to compete for a bid to the NCAA Tournament.

The quarterfinal round, featuring all eight teams, will take place on Wednesday, followed by semifinal action on Thursday. After a day of rest, the last two teams standing will compete for the tournament title on Saturday afternoon.

There are 12 teams in the league, and the bottom four (Northwestern State, McNeese State, Central Arkansas and Lamar) missed the cut for this event. Sam Houston State enters as the top seed after winning 14 of 16 conference tilts during the regular season, three games better than second-seeded Stephen F. Austin. Third-seeded Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and fourth-seeded Southeastern Louisiana were 10-6 versus league foes, so they certainly have to be viewed as threats. As for fifth-seeded Texas State, sixth-seeded Texas-San Antonio and seventh-seeded UT-Arlington, all were at least .500 in league play. In fact, the only participant in the tournament that lost more league games than it won during the regular season is eighth-seeded Nicholls State. Last season, Stephen F. Austin won the title, and eight different programs have captured the crown over the last eight years, making this tournament one to watch.

The first of four quarterfinal-round matchups pits the second-seeded Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks against the seventh-seeded UT-Arlington Mavericks. The Lumberjacks won the only regular-season meeting with the Mavericks by a 72-65 final on January 20th. As mentioned, Stephen F. Austin won the title a year ago by beating Texas-San Antonio by 11 points in the championship game. That crown was the first for the Lumberjacks, who are a modest 10-11 all-time at this event. They are coming off a loss to Texas-San Antonio in the regular- season finale and need to bounce back strong. As for the Mavericks, they closed out the regular season with a three-game losing skid and are just 13-23 all-time in this tournament. However, they did win the championship in 2008, so the taste of success still lingers. UT-Arlington is scoring 74.6 ppg, significantly better than Stephen F. Austin's 66.9 ppg, but the Lumberjacks are the best defensive team in the league (60.1 ppg), while the Mavericks rank near the bottom (73.4 ppg). Marquez Haynes is the man to watch in this matchup, as he is UTA's best player and the league's leading scorer (22.8 ppg).

Another quarterfinal pairing features the third-seeded Texas A&M-Corpus Christi Islanders against the sixth-seeded Texas-San Antonio Roadrunners. UTSA is the best free-throw shooting team in the conference (.756) and tops in three-point percentage defense as well. As for Corpus Christi, it leads the conference in rebounding margin (+5.3 rpg). The Islanders, a relative newcomer to the league, captured their lone Southland Tournament title in 2007 and is 4-1 at this event. The Roadrunners have won this event twice, most recently in 2004, and are 14-13 in Southland Tournament tilts. Corpus Christi and San Antonio split a pair of meetings during the regular season and are evenly matched. Neither team possess an individual ranked in the top 10 in the league in scoring.

The top-seeded Sam Houston State Bearkats are obviously favored in their quarterfinal matchup with the eighth-seeded Nicholls State Colonels, but it should be pointed out that the lone regular-season encounter between the two teams resulted in a rather narrow 75-69 victory for SHSU. The Bearkats have won this event only one time (2003) and are 8-11 all-time in Southland tourney games. As for Nicholls State, it has captured the crown twice, most recently in 1998. The Colonels are far from pushovers, as they possess the league's second-leading scorer in Anatoly Bose (20.4 ppg), as well as the ninth-leading scorer in Fred Hunter (14.1 ppg). Sam Houston State boasts the fourth and fifth top point producers in the league in Clavell Gilberto and Corey Allmond, who are generating 16.9 ppg and 16.3 ppg, respectively. The Bearkats are the top scoring team in the league (80.8 ppg), and Nicholls State (65.9 ppg) ranks 11th.

Rounding out the quarterfinals is a clash between the fourth-seeded Southeastern Louisiana Lions and the fifth-seeded Texas State Bobcats. These teams met just once during the regular season, and Southeastern Louisiana won that showdown by a 75-66 final. The Bobcats closed out the regular season with three straight victories and figure to enter this event with some confidence. They have won this tournament twice, but the most recent title came back in 1997, and the club is just 9-13 all-time at the event. Texas State is second in the conference in scoring (77.1 ppg), but the club is next-to-last in scoring defense (77.8 ppg). Cameron Johnson paces the Bobcats with 14.3 ppg, and he is fifth in the league in rebounding (7.9 rpg). The Lions pride themselves on strong defensive play, as they are yielding only 65.8 ppg while holding foes to a league-best 39.5 percent shooting from the floor. Patrick Sullivan paces Southeastern Louisiana with 15.7 ppg, and he is shooting 53.1 percent from the field while ripping down 8.7 rpg.

Wwwezscores NCAA Basketball Betting News

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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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