No. 18 Marquette downs DePaul

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

02/06/2012 - Rosemont, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Darius Johnson-Odom netted a game-high 23 points and all five Marquette starters finished in double figures, as the 18th-ranked Golden Eagles shook off a slow start and defeated DePaul, 89-76.

Jamil Wilson and Jae Crowder each pulled down 10 rebounds to go with 18 and 14 points, respectively for Marquette (20-5, 9-3 Big East), which was coming off a 17-point loss at Notre Dame on Saturday.

Vander Blue chipped in 16 points and Junior Cadougan rounded out the double digit scorers with 10 to help the Eagles overcome an early 12-point deficit.

Cleveland Melvin netted 22 points to pace DePaul (11-12, 2-9), but had just five in a second half owned by the visitors.

The Blue Demons had lost seven of eight coming in, but led 41-29 following a Melvin tip-in and dunk with 4 1/2 minutes left in the first half.

Johnson-Odom's personal 7-0 run pulled the Eagles closer, and they were within 43-40 at halftime before turning it on after the break.

A Crowder free throw 1:20 into the second half gave Marquette its first lead, 44-43, and the visitors never trailed from there.

Blue scored six points on an 8-0 run to push the margin to 56-46 with 13 1/2 minutes left, and a 9-2 spurt -- capped by Crowder's layup off a terrific bounce pass by Cadougan -- extended the lead to 73-58 five minutes later.

The closest DePaul got from there was eight.

Game Notes

Marquette has taken nine of the last 11 in a series that dates back to the 1917-18 campaign...The Golden Eagles have won 20 straight games for the seventh straight season...DePaul forward Moses Morgan suffered a concussion in the first half after falling on his head and did not return...Jamee Crockett and Worrel Clahar netted 17 and 16 points, respectively for the Blue Demons.

Dasino NCAA Basketball Betting News


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What Is the Point Spread?

What are Sports Betting Point Spreads?

In any football or basketball game (the main sports that use point spreads) there are two teams playing against each other.

Those teams, though, are rarely exactly evenly matched – meaning that typically one team has a better chance than the other to win the game. If bettors were allowed to bet on who was simply going to win the game, smart ones would obviously bet on the better team (likely winning more than 50% of the time in the process).

If winning were that easy the Las Vegas and online sportsbooks would stop taking any bets! This is where the point spread comes in: the basic function of the point spread is to balance the likelihood of each team “winning” by adjusting the final score by the point spread. After this adjustment is made you get the Against The Spread result (ATS result for short).

Let’s look at Super Bowl XXXIX, New England Patriots vs. Philadelphia Eagles. Most people believed the defending champ Patriots to be the better team – so if betting were simply based upon which team would win the game, an uneven majority of people would have wagered on New England. But, by using the point spread, the bookmakers adjusted the terms of the bet, evening the proposition so about half the people believed the Pats to be the smart bet, while the other half considered Philly to be the smart bet.

How to Read Point Spreads

New England Patriots -7 vs. Philadelphia Eagles

The better team, called the Favorite, is expected to win the game and must “give” or “lay” points to the weaker team. The favorite is listed with a minus sign and the number of points they are favored by (e.g., New England -7)

In the case of our example, New England must not only win the game, but they must win by more than 7 points for Pats bettors to have a winning ATS result. An Eagles bettor wins his bet either if:

To visit this internet sportsbook go to MySportsbook.com for all your football betting and World Series odds.

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.