Cashing In

Your "Bad Beat" for Sunday is on:

Minnesota (pick and under 134) at Northwestern.

The Islanders yesterday allowing three goals in the third period and losing 4-3 to Ottawa after leading 3-1 certainly was a fairly Bad Beat.

But the beat of the day goes to the Minnesota Golden Gophers. Tubby Smith's squad led the entire game. They were up 32-24 at the half and widened that to 13 points at 48-35 with only 7:30 to play. That should have been game, set, match.

But Northwestern fought back brilliantly going on a 20-4 run in taking the 55-52 lead. Minnesota's Blake Hoffarber though did bury a three with about 20 seconds remaining and this thing went into overtime tied at 57. Well that killed the under players despite clearly being on the right side.

As for the side, the Gophers took an immediate three point lead but watched the Wildcats seize the game with a quick 9-0 run. Michael Thompson scored 8 in the overtime period including going a perfect 6-for-6 from the foul line and in the end it was Northwestern with the 77-74 victory.



Your winner for Monday is on:

3* Texas A&M (plus 7 1/2) vs. Kansas.

A perfect 2-0 Sunday as both the 2* DePaul and 4* Northwestern took care of business!



An ugly ugly Monday slate. There's no NHL and no NBA and not too many college games. So just one home dog for me and that comes in the form of the suddenly hot Texas A&M Aggies.

This is certainly far from a mortal lock as Bill Self's Kansas Jayhawks are awesome and probably the best team in the entire nation. But they are on the road here and are up against a suddenly surging A&M squad.

Mark Turgeon quietly has his team in very good shape. Donald Sloan has been the team leader with his play and this fairly experienced team will have a raucous home crowd backing them and without a doubt should lay it all on the line here in this litmus test type of a game.

The Aggies have won four in a row including a game at Missouri that nobody believed they had a chance in. This team is not nearly as talented as Kansas but they were nearly as talented as Missouri either.

Cole Aldrich, Sherron Collins, Xavier Henry and the Jayhawks are great and have the potential in any game to win big. But things are not going to be easy today and after being pushed into overtime at Colorado and putting in a fairly pedestrian effort last game at home against Iowa State I'll take my chances on these Aggies at home plus this too large number!