Aminu leads No. 7 Wake Forest in rout of 25th-ranked FSU

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

02/14/2009 - Winston-Salem, NC (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Al-Farouq Aminu finished with 17 points and five rebounds, as seventh-ranked Wake Forest throttled No. 25 Florida State, 86-63, to record a key ACC win.

Jeff Teague added 15 points, while L.D. Williams added 12 for Wake Forest (19-4, 6-4 ACC), which rebounded from a loss to N.C. State on Wednesday. The Demon Deacons had lost three of the last four, but stayed near the top of the conference with the victory.

Wake Forest is now tied with Florida State (19-6, 6-4) and Virginia Tech -- which lost Saturday to Maryland -- for fourth place in the conference. The cluster of teams is behind North Carolina (8-2), Duke (7-3) and Clemson (6-3) in the conference standings, as all three teams play Sunday.

Toney Douglas paced the Seminoles with 22 points, while Uche Echefu added 11 in the loss. Both Douglas and Echefu had five rebounds.

Wake Forest led by double digits at halftime, but Florida State scored the first five points of the second half to stay close. Solomon Alabi's jumper provided the final two of those points, bringing the Seminoles within 42-35.

Then, a three-pointer from Echefu just over 4 1/2 minutes into the half moved FSU's deficit to 46-38.

But the Demon Deacons followed with a 13-0 run to take command of the game. Ishmael Smith started it with a layup, while Chas McFarland had seven points in the stretch. McFarland got two of his points on free throws with 14:07 remaining, as he went to the line after being elbowed in the face by Alabi, who was ejected.

Aminu then ended the Wake Forest run with a free throw, extending the team's lead to 59-38.

Florida State never recovered, and Wake Forest maintained a lead of around 20 points the rest of the way. With 7 1/2 minutes to play, the Demon Deacons scored eight consecutive points to extend their advantage to 79-51, and they cruised the rest of the way.

Wake Forest scored the first eight points of the game, as FSU didn't post a single point in the first five minutes. The Seminoles knotted the game at 10, but the Demon Deacons drew out their lead. A layup from Aminu and three free throws from Teague gave Wake a 25-14 advantage with a little over six minutes remaining.

Later, the hosts scored eight consecutive points to increase their lead to 35-20, and Wake Forest went into halftime leading 42-30.

Game Notes

Teague went 9-for-10 from the free throw line, and only 3-of-13 from the floor...Smith had 11 points for Wake Forest, which shot 49.1 percent from the field, but only 2-of-11 from three-point range. The Demon Deacons made 32- of-38 free throws...Florida State shot 37.9 percent from the floor overall, including a 4-for-22 effort from beyond the arc. The Seminoles made 15-of-21 free throws.

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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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