Baylor beats Texas again, advances in Big 12 tourney

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/12/2010 - Kansas City, MO (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Ekpe Udoh scored 25 points and pulled down eight rebounds as 21st-ranked Baylor ran past Texas, 86-67, in the quarterfinals of the Big 12 Tournament.

Tweety Carter added 20 points, while LaceDarius Dunn chipped in 19 points, nine boards and seven assists for the Bears (25-6), who will face ninth-ranked Kansas State in Friday's semifinals. The Wildcats upended Oklahoma State earlier Thursday.

Baylor, which lost to Missouri in last year's title game, has never won the Big 12 tourney. It was the Bears' third win over Texas in as many tries this season. That includes a victory in Baylor's regular season finale.

Damion James totaled 18 points and 12 rebounds for the Longhorns (24-9), who will await to see where they'll be placed when the field for the NCAA Tournament is announced on Sunday. Avery Bradley and Dexter Pittman each scored 14 in defeat.

Pittman's layup to start the second half brought the Longhorns within 43-41, but the third-seeded Bears scored the ensuing 13 points, capped by Carter's layup. Dunn had seven points during the flurry.

The sixth-seeded Longhorns managed to climb within 58-50 with under 13 minutes to go on Pittman's jam and they inched closer at 64-59 following another jam by the senior center with just over eight minutes remaining.

Dunn countered with a layup, and soon after his three-point play expanded the margin back to double-digits at 71-61 with 6 1/2 minutes left. Texas never threatened down the stretch.

Baylor, which shot 53.6 percent, led for virtually the entire first half, although Texas managed to tie the game at 30 on a pair of James free throws with 4 1/2 minutes left.

Game Notes

Only five schools have won the Big 12 championship, led by Kansas' six titles. Texas has also never won it, advancing to the final five times, including three in a row, from 2006-08...Last season in Oklahoma City, Baylor became the first No. 9 seed to advance to the Big 12 Championship title game -- and the second-lowest seed ever to accomplish the feat...Baylor's current four-game winning streak over Texas is its longest since winning six straight from Feb. 7, 1981-Feb. 26, 1983...This marks the first time the Bears have beaten the Longhorns three times in the same season since the 1981-82 campaign...Texas ended at 36.4 percent from the field.

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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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