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UNC-Kentucky Classic

Now that Madness is done, do you still miss good college basketball? You can still see some great hoops — for free — and commercial free. Check out TV4U. The featured game is Number 1 UNC against Number 2 Kentucky in December, 1981 – three months before the Tarheels won the 1982 national championship against Georgetown. There are some big names – Sam Perkins, James Worthy, and a freshmen guard “Mike Jordan.” Some of you will remember the Kentucky star Dirk Minniefield and oft-injured Sam Bowie, drafted before that Mike Jordan guy in the NBA draft two years later. But the best aspect of the game: the color analyst is the late, great Al McGuire.

March Madness Final Four Picks

This is a posting about the Daly Combine’s semi-final picks. We’re 24 and 18 so far – with the spreads.

LAS VEGAS, NV (April 3, 2009) – Here they are.

Villanova +7.5

UConn -4.5.

March Madness Elite 8 Picks Not So Good

This posting details what a horrible bet picking round for the Daly Combine. Still, we’re not going to be losers this year.

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 29, 2009) – We went 1 win and 4 losses for Saturday and Sunday. That’s the bad news.

The good news is that we are 24 wins and 18 losses overall and we cannot go below .500 for the tourney.

And even if we lost the next three games, leaving us 24 wins and 21 losses, it would still be a winning percentage of 53% which, according to Doctor Data, my Harvard PhD in the Daly Combine, is the lowest winning percentage you can have to make money.

Confused? Remember, you spend $11 to get back $21. That means you get your money back and $10 from someone else’s losing bet. The extra dollar goes to the Sports Book. So you need to clear more than 50% to make money.

We could have been higher except for a third stringer on Missouri who missed a last second lay-up that would have given us a win since we had Missouri +5.5 and they lost by 7.

We were right on target with Villanova. They just looked more athletic with better shooters than Pitt.

We clearly were wrong with Louisville and Oklahoma. Louisville looked lethargic and uninterested like they did in December when they lost at home to UNLV. Oklahoma couldn’t hit a 3 in the first half and then didn’t have the bench power to keep up with UNC’s depth.

What about this weekend? Those picks coming up soon.

Again, special thanks to Johnny Avello at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book.

March Madness Elite 8 Picks

This posting offers our bets for the games that will bring us the Final Four. We’re now 23 wins and 15 losses after going 5 wins and 3 losses for the Sweet 16 games. Remember, we’re picking with the spreads – not just what team will win. The spreads come from the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book.

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 27, 2009) – Here are our picks. Oddly, we went with three dogs.

Missouri +5 over UConn

Villanova +2 over Pitt

Oklahoma +6 over North Carolina

Louisville -6.5 over Michigan State

March Madness Sweet 16 Picks

This is a posting about what my mighty combine has chosen as the teams that will win or cover the spread in Thursday’s and Friday’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. The combine consists of Dave “The Heat” Williams and Art “Doctor Data” Schoenwald. So far, we are 18 wins and 12 losses on our picks. A slight clarification on the record: we’re including one win – Villanova beating UCLA and covering the 6 point spread — which we correctly chose but no one got to the sports book on time.

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 25, 2009) – So, here we stand at 60%. Here are our picks.

Villanova +2 over Duke

Pitt -7 over Xavier

Memphis -4.5 over Missouri

Connecticut -7 over Purdue

Louisville -9 over Arizona

Kansas +2 over Michigan State

North Carolina -8.5 over Gonzaga

Syracuse +1 over Oklahoma

Again, we pick by majority vote. At least there’s some democracy in America.

We disagreed on three games; each of us in the minority once.

Doctor Data, forever biased for the Big Ten, was pushing for Purdue and the points versus UConn. Dave “The Heat”, an expert on the ACC and with a man-crush on Coach K, wanted us to go with his Dukies. While I was pushing for Arizona and the points: an irony when you consider I banned all bets on any Lute Olson bench-coached team.

We’ll see late Friday night.

Special thanks to Johnny Avello at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports book for hosting us for the first weekend of March Madness.

March Madness 2009 Day 2

This posting guides you through the video that Ron Futrell and I put together down at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book.  My betting team finished the first round with 11 wins and 7 losses.  Also, notice Ron’s theory on how to bet on the first round by taking second half under/over bets.   Here’s the video from Ron’s site LocalsLoveVegas.

March Madness 2009 Day 1

This is a posting that will lead you to a link to see some video of our first day at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book with Ron Futrell and me.

There’s Gambling Going On? I’m Shocked

This is a posting about my family tradition of March Madness on the Las Vegas Strip and why it’s so hot. And why no one is pushing the gambling issue any more.

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 18, 2009) – This is March Madness Eve. I can’t wait. Tomorrow morning my father-in-law Dave Williams, a handful of loyal friends, and I will be parking ourselves at the Wynn Las Vegas for our annual ritual.

Over the next two days, we will see all 64 teams that begin play on Thursday. That’s 32 games! Isn’t that a little too much? Not anymore. It’s tradition. We’ve been doing this for 19 years.

Remember, I’ll be on Twitter with all the breaking news.

But what about the betting?

Here’s a dirty little secret. We pool our bets. In other words, we all work as a team and decide which team we’re going to put our money on. If we can’t decide, we pass on the game.

Here’s what’s so cool about that. We find ourselves rooting for each other rather than against someone who placed an opposing bet. Trust me, rooting against someone you’re there to have a good time with – isn’t fun.

What’s also great about betting is that it makes some uninteresting games interesting. Let’s say for example, Radford is a 25-point underdog to UNC. With a minute left, the score is 75-50. The game is over on the court, but not in the sports book. You can’t believe the hootin’ and hollerin’ when some third string guard finally gets into the game and heaves in a 3-pointer to upset the spread.

That is one of the arguments for betting on sports. It gives college basketball more fans and more interest in the games – even the dog games.

There are certainly plenty of arguments against sports betting on college games. To some who see the purity of amateur sports, sports betting just seems polluting. Sports gambling could lead to unscrupulous bettors paying off players to shave points. We saw the scandal in the 1950s with CCNY and in the late 1990s with Arizona State.

I’ve done my share of covering sports gambling over the years for local TV and a few pieces for Fox Sports before they went regional. In fact, if you go to my reel you can see some quick excerpts of the gambling stories I did.

And the pro-gaming arguments always seem to win. For instance, the Arizona State betting scandal wouldn’t have been uncovered if it weren’t for Nevada gaming officials spotting it.

The flip side argument is this. If there was no gambling then there would have been no scandal. That’s not entirely true. Those kids would have found illegal bookies to take their bets. And those consequences might have been dangerous with a bookie not sanctioned by tough state laws. In other words, people will gamble; let’s keep it on a level playing field and the rules transparent.

There have been plenty attempts to wipe out betting on college sports. Former Nebraska football Coach Tom Osborn, when elected the U.S. House, sponsored a bill to ban all betting on all college sports. It was well-received and applauded by many; so many, you thought the bill would succeed.

However, that bill never got out of committee. Why? The NCAA knew if that bill passed gambling would have gone underground or worse out of the country. And some interest in March Madness might wane.

Coach Knight Right On March Madness

This posting covers an idea floated Sunday night on ESPN by Bobby Knight about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourney.  Expand it.

 

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 18, 2009) – Hopefully I’ll have a chance to interview Coach Knight at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book over the next two days for March Madness. 

 

Again, I’ll be on Twitter giving you updates throughout the weekend.

 

One of the questions I’ll ask Coach Knight is his idea about expanding the field of 65 (really 64) to 128.  In other words, have double the amount of teams and each team will play one additional game.

 

More specifically, I’ll ask him if he came up with the idea just to stop all the bickering on Selection Sunday.  To hear ESPN’s Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas go after each other over whether Arizona or St. Mary’s should have made the field got downright nasty.

 

Here’s my suggestion.  Expand the field to 96 teams.  The top 32 teams will have a bye.  That means if you’re a 1 through 8 seed, you don’t play in the play-in game. 

 

The 9 through 16 seeds will play a home game against teams seeded 65 to 96.  The losers of those play-in games will be eligible to play in the NIT.

 

This will bring in more revenue for a team that made it to the big dance but most likely won’t make it to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.

 

And as we’ve seen the 64-65 play-in game has some relevance to the teams playing.  Why not allow 32 other teams that same chance?

 

And maybe this plan will stop the bickering.  Yeah right.  Let’s be serious.  There will be arguments that a 15-13 team had every right to be seeded 96 and not a 17-12 team from a weak conference.

 

That means this means something to kids, the schools, and fans of college hoops.

 

Got a better plan?  Let me see it here.

 

 

March Madness Tweets From Me: Plus Packer, Coach Knight at Wynn Las Vegas

LAS VEGAS, NV – Come join me and a crazy cast of characters at the Wynn Las Vegas for the first four days of March Madness. Even Bobby Knight and Billy Packer will be with us.

Knight and Packer will be broadcasting from the sports book. I’ve been assured they will be asking for the opinions of my brainy posse who I will introduce a little later in this post. I’ve also been assured that all the chairs in the Wynn Sports Book are either bolted to the floor or too big to throw.

Here’s how to join us.

First, if you can’t make it to Las Vegas just follow me online or on your cell phone with Twitter. I will be tweeting during the first four days of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament.

To receive my updates, you need to sign-up at Twitter. It’s free. Once you have your account, find my Twitter site and then sign-up as one of my followers. Then keep watching the computer or your cell phone starting March 19.

The second way is to join us at the Wynn Sports Book. For more information, go to LocalsLoveVegas and click on Johnny Avello, Wynn Sports Book on March Madness and see the interview with Johnny Avello.

As a last minute check, I just found out all the rooms at the Wynn Las Vegas are booked for the weekend. You can still join us at the Wynn Sports Book, though.

If you do, you’ll meet Ron Futrell, my long-time friend and broadcast sidekick, who also runs the site LocalsLoveVegas.com.

LocalsLoveVegas will also carry video of our antics during the games. And Ron will also be tweeting. Here’s his Twitter site.

Take a look at this interview Ron and I did at LocalsLoveVegas. Click on “March Madness Hits Wynn Sports Book”.

In addition, I will have my usual posse on hand. This is the betting combine that has other sports bettors trembling.

Dave “The Heat” Williams is flying in from ACC country to give us the low-down from Tobacco Road. (He’s my father-in-law: judge him on his hoop choices and not on the advice he gave his only daughter.)

Art “Doctor Data”, the PhD from Harvard, who has an uncanny ability to call a game when it’s a laugher, is also an expert on the Big Ten and Southeast Conference. (After all, his daughter graduated from Michigan and his son from Vandy.)

And last but not least, Jerry “Twinkle Toes” Ehrens, a prodigy out of Princeton, knows The Big East and The Ivy League for the beasts they are.

The four of us pool our bets to get the optimum financial and bragging right benefits. (Tax about toxic assets.  Really, we do it so there’s no acrimony at the table.)

OK, I’ll level with you. Whatever bets you hear we make, go the other way.

This is a family ritual for me. I’ve done this since 1991 when I moved to Las Vegas. My father-in-law Dave has joined me every year.

I’m looking forward to having you there either in person or by Twitter.

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