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.

Wwwcarclub 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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