Kansas returns to top spot in hoops poll

NCAA Basketball Betting Lines

03/08/2010 - New York, NY (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Kansas is back atop the men's basketball world, taking the top spot in the Associated Press poll for the third time this season.

The Jayhawks (29-2) were the preseason No. 1 and spent the first eight weeks of the season as the top-ranked team before a loss to Tennessee on January 10. Kansas then returned to the top the first week of February before falling to No. 2 just last week after a loss at Oklahoma State, but a loss by Syracuse at Louisville on Saturday pushed the Big 12 regular-season champs back up to the top spot.

Kansas received 63 first-place votes and 1,623 points from a nationwide media panel to easily outdistance SEC regular-season champ Kentucky. The Wildcats (29-2) picked up the other two top tallies and 1,553 points to move up one spot to second.

Syracuse (28-3), which occupied the top ranking for the first time in 20 years before Saturday's 78-68 setback in the Freedom Hall finale, dropped two spots to third.

Duke remained fourth and Ohio State climbed one spot to fifth. Purdue, West Virginia, New Mexico, Kansas State and Villanova complete this week's top 10. Kansas State dropped four spots from fifth after losses at Kansas and at home to Iowa State.

The second 10 consists of Michigan State, Butler, Wisconsin, BYU, Tennessee, Pittsburgh, Temple, Gonzaga, Maryland and Vanderbilt. Maryland vaulted three spots after entering the poll last week at No. 22 thanks to wins over Duke and Virginia to claim a share of the ACC regular-season crown with the Blue Devils. Vanderbilt dropped seven places from 13th after Saturday's home loss against South Carolina.

Baylor, Georgetown, Texas A&M, Xavier and UTEP are the last five teams ranked this week.

There were no new entries this week heading into tournament play in the power conferences.

Wwwibetcasino 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.