Friday Best Bets, Thursday Recaps
Thursday was an interesting day for yours truly, spent mostly away from the Tuley’s Takes home office for a change.
I went to the gym with my wife. We also went to a movie (“Knock at the Cabin” – I give it a thumbs-up for escapism, but you’re not missing much if you wait for it to come to cable or streaming). But the highlight of my day was my first guitar lesson as I've always wanted to be a rock star. Being a sports betting journalist is nice and all and comes with a modicum of fame in our little world, but writing a hit song is on my Bucket List. When I’m a one-hit wonder, remember you read it here first! I did make it home in time to watch my Best Bet on the St. Louis Battlehawks cash as the XFL kicked off Week 2 with its first Thursday night game. I gave out St. Louis in the VSiN newsletter yesterday morning, though I stressed that while the line was +3 that I was waiting for a better number as several books were adding juice to Seattle -3 with others going to 3.5. By the time I posted yesterday’s version of this column, several books were at St. Louis +4 and that’s what we got. I felt pretty good even though Seattle jumped out to a 12-0 lead, but St. Louis rallied and we were pretty safe for the cover even before the Battlehawks pulled out the 20-18 outright upset.
All in all, it was a pretty, pretty good day, but it wasn’t a total success as we lost our two NHL plays. Our straight play on the Wild-Blue Jackets 1P Under 1.5 lost as Marc-Andre Fleury and the Wild defense came through, but the Wild somehow scored 2 goals in the first 20 minutes and didn’t do anything else the rest of the game in a 2-0 victory. I hate when that happens. And we also lost our 1P Over parlay on Canucks-Blues and Flames-Golden Knights as both had 1-0 scores after the opening period. At least we also hit our other posted recommendation (non-Best Bet) on the Pacers +8.5 as they took the Celtics to OT and held on for the cover. Let’s recap the rest of Thursday’s (full-game betting action) and then look for more plays on Friday.
Thursday Recaps
NBA: Favorites went 8-1 SU on the 1st day back from the All-Star Break, but only 5-4 ATS as the Pacers (+8 in 142-138 OT loss vs. Celtics), Pistons (+8 in 108-106 loss at Magic) and Thunder (+1.5 in 120-119 OT loss at Jazz) covered as underdogs in SU losses. The lone upset was by the Nuggets (+3 in 115-109 win at the Cavaliers). Home teams went 7-2 SU and 6-3 ATS. Unders led 5-4.