Cashing In

Your "Bad Beat" for Friday is on:

West Virginia (Minus 2 1/2) at Pittsburgh.

It turned out to be an amazing amazing game from Pittsburgh in yet another edition of the Backyard Brawl.

The Mountaineers were in complete control throughout and led 66-59 with only 45 seconds remaining. But Bob Huggins' squad forgot to close the game out and also forgot to make their free throws. That led to a major comeback that was capped by an Ashton Gibbs three pointer with 16 seconds left which sent the crowd into a frenzy and the game into overtime.

The Panthers continued the momentum into the extra session going up by five right off the bat. When laying three it makes it awfully difficult for the visitors to cover but somehow the Panthers choked down the stretch and allowed a late three as this game went into double overtime.

Pitt once again led throughout this extra five minute stint but allowed West Virginia back in it thanks to fouling Da'sean Butler shooting a three with 25 seconds to go. Butler made all three to tie up the game. Pitt then hit a phenomenal buzzer beater but the shot was ruled too late which it was by about .2 seconds max.

To a third overtime and the Panthers wound up pulling this thing out 98-95.

Look back to regulation, WVU was up 7 with 45 seconds remaining!?!?!



Your winners for Saturday are on:

4* Stanford (plus 3 1/2) vs. Washington.

3* Indiana (plus 17) at Wisconsin.

One play on Friday and it was a fairly lucky 3* winner on Pittsburgh.

How can a team that has been dreadfully underachieving all season long and a team that is a pathetic 0-6 both SU and ATS on the road be laying points to a decent enough Pac-10 opponent?

I don't know? And also I don't care if the Huskies took care of business in the first meeting by 30 plus. That game was a long time ago and it was at home.

Lorenzo Romar's Washington Huskies are wrongly given too much respect here and are therefore the dreaded road chalk. Sure UW can run the court and score with Isaiah Thomas and Quincy Pondexter but so what? Things have not worked out all season as these guys were supposed to compete for the conference title but instead have competed for a while lot of nothing.

The Huskies had a chance to finally step it up on the highway and tie Cal for the lead in the conference but instead they crapped on themselves once again in the double digit loss on Thursday at Berkeley.

Stanford is not very good, I fully understand that but Landry Fields is a playa and at home I fully believe the team with the tree as a mascot will prevail as they have done all season long. Johnny Dawkins' group is not terrible and to be the underdog here is wrong with a capital W!

It's almost as if the oddsmaker still believes that Washington will flip that switch and turn it on.

Um, no they won't!



Wisconsin is just laying too much, period! Of course the Badgers at home are always great defensively and will beat a poor Indiana team but the UW offense is not very good to begin with and still without big man Jon Leuer won't help things.

The Badgers just finally lost at home against Illinois which snapped their forver winning streak in Madison against unranked conference foes. I definitely do not see a second straight loss at all but thinking this thing will get ugly as the number states is a bit much. Bo Ryan is all about the defense and his teams are not really all that equipped to win by such a margin.

Wiscy will be too good and may be up by double digits at the half but they don't boast an offense that can sustain all that much and therefore this price is just too steep.

Every now and then Tom Crean's team surprises and if they can show a little something, anything than that will be enough to grab that cash.