Villanova plays host to No. 17 Marquette

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

01/28/2012 - Philadelphia, PA (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Hoping to exact some revenge for an earlier defeat this season, the Villanova Wildcats will try to knock off the 17th-ranked Marquette Golden Eagles when the two teams hook up for a Big East Conference clash at the Wells Fargo Center in Philadelphia today.

Marquette is an impressive 17-4 on the season, and the team has won six of its first eight league bouts. The Golden Eagles are flying high on the wings of a five-game win streak, but despite their solid run and their stellar overall record, they are just 2-3 in true road games this season. MU's most recent triumph came in a 67-47 rout of visiting USF on Tuesday night.

Villanova comes into this bout a game under .500 on the season (10-11), and the team has had its difficulties in conference play as well with only three wins in nine opportunities. The Wildcats recently had a modest two-game win streak stopped in an 84-74 loss at Louisville on Wednesday, but coach Jay Wright's club has performed well at home and in neighboring Philadelphia, sporting an 8-2 home mark to this point.

Villanova leads the all-time series with Marquette, 11-8, but the Golden Eagles took an 81-77 decision when the two met in Milwaukee back on New Year's Day. Darius Johnson-Odom led MU with 24 points in that game, while Mouphtaou Yarou scored 14 points to pace the Wildcats.

Johnson-Odom scored 17 points, while Davante Gardner and Jae Crowder added 15 points apiece to help lead Marquette to a relatively easy win over USF earlier this week. The Golden Eagles shot just 39.7 percent from the field, but held the Bulls to 35.6 percent, which included a 4-of-14 effort from three-point range. MU committed just five turnovers in the game, while coaxing 22 miscues from USF on which the home team scored 20 points. With the effort, Johnson- Odom upped his team-leading scoring average to 18.1 ppg, and he is hitting nearly 40 percent of his three-point attempts (45-of-114). Crowder (16.2 ppg, 7.2 rpg) is the squad's only other double-digit scorer at the moment, although both Gardner and Todd Mayo are close to joining the ranks as they net 9.9 and 9.7 ppg, respectively. As a team, the Golden Eagles are putting up 76.3 ppg on the strength of their 46.1 percent overall shooting effort, which includes a 35.5 percent showing from beyond the arc. They are giving up 63.7 ppg, with foes hitting less than 40 percent of their total shots, and Marquette takes advantage of more than 17 turnovers per outing.

Despite their sub par record, the Wildcats own favorable margins in both scoring (+2.2) and rebounding (+6.3) for the season. The team boasts three double-digit scorers, led by star guard Maalik Wayns (18.7 ppg, 4.6 apg), who is shooting 43 percent from the floor, but really shines at the free-throw line where he is a Big East-best 89 percent accurate (112-of-125). Dominic Cheek (12.2 ppg, 4.3 rpg) and Yarou (11.5 ppg, 8.2 rpg) round out the offensive-minded trio for Villanova, which hasn't played very good defense this season in yielding 71.3 ppg and goading the opposition into only 11.3 turnovers per contest. Villanova stood toe to toe with Louisville earlier this week, but in the end just didn't make enough plays at either end of the court in order to pick up what would have a huge road win. Wayns scored 19 points, James Bell notched his first career double-double with 14 points and 13 rebounds, and Yarou chipped in with 10 points and seven boards for the 'Cats, who made good on only 39.4 percent of their total shots, missing 14 of their 19 three-point tries along the way. JayVaughn Pinkston grabbed 12 boards, helping VU outrebound the Cardinals, 43-41. Another positive for the Wildcats was the fact that they scored 40 points in the paint, compared to 22 for Louisville.

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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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