Vandy downs Georgia in SEC QFs

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/13/2010 - Nashville, TN (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - John Jenkins poured in a career-high 25 points to lead the 20th-ranked Vanderbilt Commodores to a 78-66 victory over the Georgia Bulldogs in the quarterfinal round of the Southeastern Conference Tournament.

Jermaine Beal pitched in 16 points for Vanderbilt (24-7), the East Division's second seed, which will do battle with the Mississippi State Bulldogs (W-1) in Saturday's semifinal round. The Commodores also got 10 points from A.J. Ogilvy.

"We've had very competitive games with Georgia both times this season, and tonight was not an exception," Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said. "We're happy to win. We're happy to move on."

Travis Leslie exploded for a career-high 34 points in defeat for Georgia (14-17), the East Division's sixth seed. Trey Thompkins added 13 points for the Bulldogs.

"They were definitely the more aggressive team to start off," Georgia guard Ricky McPhee said. "We just got behind and just weren't able to make that run to come back and take the lead."

Vanderbilt went on a 14-4 run midway through the first half to take a 22-13 advantage.

Georgia fought back and owned its largest lead of the game with 5:35 remaining in the first half, a two-point advantage (25-23). Unfortunately for the Bulldogs, Vanderbilt closed the opening stanza with a 12-2 run and led 35-27 at intermission despite shooting only 35.3 percent from the field.

Over the final 20 minutes, the Commodores connected on 55.2 percent of their field goal attempts, including 5-of-8 from three-point range, en route to the double-digit victory.

Vanderbilt earned a 43-32 rebounding advantage in the tilt and limited Georgia to 3-of-16 shooting from three-point range, two obvious factors in the Commodores' success.

Leslie connected on 12-of-23 shots from the floor in the contest, but the rest of the Georgia team combined to shoot a lackluster 12-of-36.

Game Notes

Georgia and Vanderbilt split a pair of meetings during the regular season, and the Commodores own an 82-47 advantage in the all-time series between the teams...Vanderbilt won its only SEC title back in 1951 and is set to face a Mississippi State squad that captured the most recent of its three SEC championships last season...The Commodores move into the semifinal round of the SEC Tournament for the first time since 2004...Andre Walker pulled down 10 rebounds for Vanderbilt, his fourth double-digit career rebounding total.

Sportsilne NCAA Basketball Betting News

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FOOTBALL TRASH TALK

NFL Football Trash Talk

Trash talk has a place in every competitive endeavor (except baseball; those stirrup-wearers are too busy chewing on their sunflower seeds and their supplements to worry about what their opponents are doing).

Fantasy sports is no exception. Any intelligent discussion of the subject would probably start with a thesis statement or a definition of terms. Thankfully, this wont be an intelligent discussion.

Let me just say that I am happy to take a place in this space alongside my talented colleagues, even our commissioner. (You should see how she bleats like a demented paper boy about league fees on our fantasy site).

Trash talking, I would argue, is primarily about amusing your friends, their sheeplike demeanors and sloping foreheads notwithstanding. The best place I have found for football trash talking is at www.SportsAlarm.com.

Beyond the entertainment factor, though, I would recognize that the sophomoric ritual has one advantage, when properly applied. It magnifies your fantasy triumphs and mitigates your fantasy failures by transforming the eventual point total into an afterthought. Winning makes it seem like your opponent really is a truss-owning, lapel-pin-wearing nitwit. And in defeat, trash talk can be the air bag to break the fall from your hyperbolic heights. The plug-necked yahoos on your team, you can say, will be sacking groceries by the end of the season.

The best trash talk, in my view, is layered and nuanced. And it doesnt focus only on your opponents team. It picks apart your opponent. The idea is to create a shock-and-awe-scale blizzard of nonsense, and the goal is to make your opponent drop his hands from his keyboard in exasperation.

What team does your opponent root for? Accuse a Giants fan of having a Joe Namath pillowcase. Wheres your opponent from? Give a look of concern no matter his reply, then say, I'll try to type slower for you next time. Is your opponent into politics? Label everyone a tax-and-spend corporate shill.

Cap all that with a liberal application of irrelevance. For instance, dont just conclude by saying your opponent is a twerp who drafts like my grandmother. Say that your opponent is a sweater-wearing, eyebrow-plucking twerp who drafts his team about as well as Zsa Zsa Gabor gave acceptance speeches at the Oscars. By the time your foe makes sense of that, his starting running back will have had puppies.

But what about you? Hmm? Recall a memorable slam? Have a tried-and-true technique? Know someone who seems impervious to insult? Take a moment and tells us about it. Put together some (fit-for-publication) thoughts. You wont be too busy returning phone messages from your friends, Im sure, to reply.

In addition to the trash talking, the Sports Alarm has a huge gallery of high resolution pictures of beautiful women and models in bikinis. The most popular models are: Lindsay Lohan, Carrie Underwood, Alessandra Ambrosio, and Paris Hilton.