10th-ranked Duke cruises past BC

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

01/29/2007 - Durham, NC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Josh McRoberts scored 16 points, grabbed 12 rebounds, and blocked five shots, as the 10th-ranked Duke Blue Devils defeated the Boston College Eagles, 75-61.

DeMarcus Nelson scored 17 points and pulled down eight boards for Duke (18-3, 5-2 ACC) which has won five in a row. Jon Scheyer scored 11 points for the Blue Devils, and Lance Thomas added 10 points and nine rebounds.

Jared Dudley scored 17 points and raked in eight boards for BC (14-6, 6-2), which has lost two of three. Tyrese Rice scored 13 points, but shot only 5- of-15 from the field, including 1-of-7 from behind the arc. Shamari Spears added 12 points for the Eagles.

Thomas hit a layup in the first minute of the second half, opening up a 42-32 lead for Duke. The Blue Devils kept BC at bay for the rest of the game, and the Eagles, though often pulling to within single digits, never got any closer than five points.

A dunk by Tyrelle Blair brought the Eagles to within 63-57 with a little more than five minutes left, but the Blue Devils closed BC out with a 12-4 stretch to finish the game.

The ACC rivals were neck-and-neck throughout the first half, but the Blue Devils pulled away with an 8-1 run to close. A Rice layup brought the Eagles within 32-31 with 2:51 left in the half. Scheyer hit a jumper, though, and Nelson hit three straight layups, including one with four seconds left, and Duke took a 40-32 lead into the intermission.

Game Notes

Boston College shot 20-of-58 (34.5 percent) from the field, and 4-of-16 (25 percent) from behind the arc...Duke outrebounded the Eagles, 41-30...Duke's David McClure landed awkwardly after going for a rebound with six minutes left in the game, and hyperextended his knee. McClure was helped off the court by trainers, and did not return.

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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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