March Madness Betting - Texas vs Wake Forest
by Ian James
The first round of the East Region of the 2010 NCAA Tournament will come to you from New Orleans, Louisiana and the matchup between the eighth-seeded Texas Longhorns and the ninth-seeded Wake Forest Demon Deacons is sure to be a beauty. The winner of tonight’s contest will likely earn themselves a date in the second-round with top- seeded Kentucky. They are playing 16th-seeded East Tennessee State in their first round matchup, and that’s about as close to a lock as they come.
Thursday, March 18, 9:35 PM ET (CBS)
: Texas (-5 ½) O/U (147 ½)
But the second round is a long way away for these teams as this eight versus nine is always a tough first round contest. Wake Forest earned their spot in the National Tournament via an at-large bid after compiling a 19-10 record, including their play in the ACC Tournament. They’ll be making their second appearance in a row under third-year head coach Dino Gaudio, their 22nd NCAA Tournament appearance in school history.
They’ll be facing a Texas team that started out the year on fire and were the top-ranked team in the country for two weeks in January, that’s before this team started to crumble. Things got so bad for the Longhorns that they fell completely out of the Top-25 in March. Although they finished with a respectable 24-9 record, they lost nine of their finals 16 games. They will be looking to improve on last year’s performance where they were knocked out in the second round.
Wake Forest owns a 3-1 series lead over Texas, with one of those wins coming in the second round of the 1996 NCAA Tournament. If they Deacons want to make it 4-1, they’re going to shake their season ending slump. Much like Texas, Wake Forest struggled down the stretch, losing 5 of its last 6 games including a 21-point blowout loss in the ACC Tournament to Miami.
This matchup will pit strength versus strength as Wake Forest prides themselves on the defensive end of the court. They limited opponents to 38 percent shooting from the field, and 28.9 percent from three-point range. That’s not to say that they can’t score the ball, as they averaged 73 ppg but if they want to get through Texas, they’re going to need to come up with some stops.
The Deacons don’t have the kind of fire power to get into a shootout with Texas, as Al-Farouq Aminu is their top scorer with 15.7 ppg. Ishmael Smith comes in averaging 13.3 ppg while C.J. Harris rounds out the double-digit scorers with 10.0 ppg for Wake.
Texas will have the best athlete on the court in Damion James, who was just selected as a First-Team All-Big 12 performer. James averaged 18 ppg on over 50 percent shooting, including 40.2 percent from downtown. This guy can do it all, averaging 10.4 rpg along with 54 steals and 39 blocked shots on the year.
If James plays well, Texas will win this game. Wake will have to put an extra guy on him and Longhorns have the secondary scoring to burn you on any given night.
