NBA Betting News, Match-Ups and Trends For Tuesday 12/3/24

Quote of the Day
“I’m not doing another 3-game MTE again. Moving forward, we will only play home-and-homes or single-game events… I don’t think I’ll ever do a 3-game MTE again. There’s zero chance I ever do that again”
Connecticut basketball coach Dan Hurley, after going 0-3 in the Maui Classic

Tuesday’s quiz
What team did John Calipari lead to the Final Four in 1996?

Monday’s quiz
Bills’ QB Josh Allen played his college football at Wyoming

Sunday’s quiz
Miami Hurricanes lost their last five bowl games; they beat West Virginia 31-14 the last time they won a bowl, in Orlando back in 2016.

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Tuesday’s Den: Nobody asked me, but……​

Broncos 41, Browns 32
Winston threw for 497 yards, four TD’s.
He also threw 3 INT’s, 2 of which were returned for Denver TD’s.
Jeudy caught nine passes for 235 yards and a TD.
Last time a Cleveland QB threw for 400+ yards? Josh McCown (457) in 2015
Nix threw a 93-yard TD pass to put Denver ahead, 28-17.
Lutz kicked 27-yard FG to put Denver ahead 34-32 with 2:54 left.
Cleveland outgained the Broncos, 552-400.
Denver is 7-0 if they score more than 20 points, 1-5 if they score 20 or less.

— Rhode Island 84, Yale 78
Archie Miller’s Rams are 8-0, albeit against schedule #337.
Yale, Charleston are only teams in top 150 that URI has played so far.
Providence @ URI is an interesting game on Saturday’s schedule.

— Washington State 68, Nevada 57
Nevada was favored by 11.5 points.
Wazzu was 12-29 on the arc, Wolf Pack 4-20.

— Purdue fired football coach Ryan Walters after going 1-11 this season, 0-11 vs I-A teams, with only three of the 11 losses by less than 17 points.
Purdue was 5-19 in Walters’ two seasons as head coach; they lost 66-0 to rival Indiana Saturday- they’re 129th in the country in offense, 130th in defense.

— Good news for Sam Houston State- they went 9-3 this year, in their 2nd year as a I-A team.
Bad news for Sam Houston State- Temple hired Sam Houston’s coach KC Keeler as their new head coach. Keeler was 97-39 overall at Sam Houston, winning the I-AA national title in 2020;

— Duke 23, Wake Forest 17
Duke threw a 39-yard TD pass on the last play of the game for a walk-off win.
Wake Forest led 17-3 with 1:00 left in the third quarter,
Duke is 9-3, with six wins by 7 or fewer points.

— Former NFL QB/Stanford alum Andrew Luck was named as the Cardinal’s general manager; he will manage aspects of both the football and business sides of the program.
On the business side, he will handle duties typically held by NFL team presidents — fundraising, sponsorships, attendance, sales, in-stadium experience and alumni relations.

For football, Luck will oversee the coaching staff, player personnel, recruiting, roster management and student-athlete experience, whatever that is.

— Chicago Cubs signed P Matthew Boyd to a 2-year deal worth $29M; Boyd will be 34 on Ground Hog Day- he was 2-2, 2.72 in eight starts for Cleveland this past year, 0-0, 0.77 in three playoff starts for the Guardians. For his career, Boyd is 46-69, 4.85 in 168 career starts, mostly with Detroit.

— Famous birthdays, December 2nd:
Bobby Howfield, 88
Tom Woodeshick, 83
Jim Brewer, 73
Daryl Hannah, 64
Julianne Moore, 64
Brendan Fraser, 56
Lindsey Hunter, 54
James Laurinaitis, 38

— Washington Commanders were 4-13 last year; they’re 8-5 this year, despite playing a rookie QB, who has done really well.
Commanders were minus-14 in turnovers last year; they’re +3 this week,

— Started watching re-runs of the old TV series Criminal Minds, never watched that show much. One of the first shows I watch, the bad guy is played by Michael O’Keefe, who played Danny Noonan in the classic movie Caddyshack.
Michael O’Keefe will be 70 in April, which makes me feel old; he played Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke in the HBO series Winning Time couple years ago.

— I’m watching the Duke-Kansas game on TV last week; the game was played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, and former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski was sitting courtside with his wife. Sitting to Krzyzewski’s left was the actor Ken Jeong, who was in the Hangover movies.
Made me wonder what those two guys would talk about, if anything, and if Coach K had ever seem The Hangover. Funny movie.

— Colorado-Iowa State was the 5th place game at the Maui Classic, which is unusual only because those teams are in the same league now. Usually teams from the same league aren’t in the same tournament, but with all the jumping between leagues, this happened.
Same thing at the Battle for Atlantis, where Arizona-West Virginia played in the 3rd place game.

— Last year, 1,962 college basketball players entered the transfer portal, with over 1,100 of them changing teams. With 364 Division I teams now, that works out to 5+ players per team looking to jump ship.

— Dartmouth 88, Boston College 83
ACC teams aren’t supposed to lose to Ivy League teams, especially lower-level Ivy teams.
Dartmouth made 17-31 3-pointers in the game, which was last Friday.

— Notre Dame’s basketball team has a freshman guard Brady Stevens, who scored over 1,000 points in high school at Wellesley High in Massachusetts. The reason I mention this is that his father is Brad Stevens, the President of Basketball Operations for the Celtics.