Sunday Best Bets, Saturday Recaps
Saturday was a very fun sports betting day with wall-to-wall college basketball, plus our regular NBA and NHL Saturday cards this time of year and an XFL game for good measure.
It was especially good for us in the Tuley’s Takes home office as we won our Best Bet of the day on the DC Defenders +4 at the hometown Vegas Vipers as they rallied to win 18-6 to make us 2-0 ATS in XFL Week 2 as we also had St. Louis +4 at Seattle on Thursday night. As I joked on “Sunday Bet Prep” with my VSiN colleague Matt Youmans, it was a “stormy” day at Cashman Field in downtown Las Vegas for that game, but VSiN’ very own Stormy Buonantony was the sideline reporter and resident sports betting expert on the broadcast. I also made the point that a lot of people knock the XFL and say they don’t want to bet on “minor-league football,” but a lot of those same people love to bet college football, which if you think about it is the minor league for the NFL. Besides, I stressed that college football experts should have an edge as they’ve seen a lot of these players in high-profile CFB games in recent years (granted, as a developmental league, there’s quite a few Division I-AA and lower-level players that never got a shot at the NFL, but there’s plenty of players that played major roles in major college football that are trying for their second chance at the NFL). However, the highlight of my day was actually winning my top NHL play as I passed on 1P Over/Unders and instead went with a “swagger play” on the Ducks after they snapped a 6-game losing streak on Thursday, I gave out the Ducks on the puck line at +1.5 +150 (and got it at +160 in Vegas) and cashed as the Ducks held on for a 3-2 victory. I also mentioned taking +360 on the money line to pull the outright upset (and got it at +400) after missing a similar play on the Blackhawks earlier in the week. I didn’t list that as a play in the VSiN Best Bets file, but our followers know we had it and hope you all bet on it as well. I did lose a play in the NBA on the Nuggets, but it was clearly my least favorite play of the day. I also blanked with my horse racing bets (though I did finish 8th in an National Horseplayers Championship qualifying tournament after being in 2nd place with three races to go), but it was still a winning day. Let’s recap the rest of the Saturday action in the major team sports and then look for more winners on Sunday.Saturday Recaps
CBB: No. 12 Gonzaga beat No. 15 Saint Mary's 77-68 late Saturday, covering as a 6.5-point home favorite. In other games between #CBB Top 25 teams, No. 17 Indiana upset No. 5 Purdue 79-71 as 6.5-point road dog & No. 9 Baylor beat No. 8 Texas 81-72 and covered as 4-point home fave.
More CBB: Ranked teams continued to struggle vs. unranked teams as Arizona State (+12.5) upset No. 7 Arizona, Florida State (+13.5) upset No. 13 Miami-Fla., Villanova (+2.5) upset No. 19 Creighton and Oklahoma (+7) upset No. 23 Iowa State. North Carolina (-4.5) also beat No. 6 Virginia and Mississippi State (-1.5) beat No. 25 Texas A&M, but those weren’t upsets as the unranked team was favored. In addition to those outright wins, Arkansas covered as an 8-point road underdog in its 86-83 loss at No. 2 Alabama and West Virginia covered as a 9.5-point road dog in its 76-74 loss at No. 3 Kansas.