Wednesday Best Bets, Tuesday Recaps
Tuesday was a little different of a day in and out of the Tuley’s Takes home office as we spent part of it doing chores after our weekend trip to Arizona and then part of it tooling around Las Vegas with VSiN superfan Michael Palmeri. I took him to lunch at one of my favorite local spots, Windy City Beefs-N-Dogs, for Italian beef sandwiches, which I was craving lately from my childhood in the Chicago suburbs (and I added a hot dog).
Since it’s located well off the Las Vegas Strip in the northwest part of the valley, I took the scenic route and told him some old Vegas stories (well, I’ve lived here since 1998, so they weren’t really about “old Vegas” but of a more contemporary nature of the last 25 years). The most visceral memories for me involved seeing the Texas Station Hotel & Casino site in North Las Vegas totally razed (it was my first casino “home” around the turn of the century) and the same fate for the Crazy Horse II gentlemen’s club on Industrial Road just off the Strip.
I returned home well in time to see my Best Bet of the day hit on the Kings-Wild First-Period Under +120 as the two teams played a scoreless 20 minutes. We did lose our secondary pick on the Ducks-Lightning 1P Over / Canucks-Predators 1P Over, but we were proud of the fact we went with the straight bet as our Best Bet since the 1P Overs have been slumping lately. We’ve lost three consecutive parlays involving 1P Overs (one had a 1P Under winner as one of the legs, which led to me thinking about playing those straight at plus-money), though we’re still 4-4 with those plays since the Super Bowl for a net profit of +2.51 units. So, we still haven’t lost faith during this slump, but just trying to be smart about how to bet these moving forward (we also look forward to the return of the NBA on Thursday so we have more games to choose from each day).
Let’s recap the rest of Tuesday’s (full-game) betting action and look for more plays on Wednesday.
Tuesday Recaps
CBB: No. 14 Kansas State upset No. 9 Baylor 75-65 as short 1.5-point home underdog. No. 13 Miami-Florida beat Virginia Tech 76-70, but it was actually an upset as the Hurricanes were 2-point road underdogs. No. 25 Texas A&M beat No. 11 Tennessee 68-63 and it wasn’t an upset as A&M won (and covered) as a 2.5-point home favorite.
NHL: Faves went 6-3 with the upsets by the Canadiens (+300 in 5-2 win at the Devils), Blackhawks (+240 in 3-2 shootout win vs. the Golden Knights) and Red Wings (+136 in 3-1 win at the Capitals). Home teams also went 6-3. Unders led 5-4.
Wednesday NHL Best Bets
Jets-Islanders 1P Under 1.5 +105: Following our successful approach on Tuesday, let’s stick with a 1P Under as our top play for Wednesday on a short 3-game NHL card. The Jets are the No. 2 First-Period Under team this season at 33-24, including a 10-4 run despite going Over on Monday, while the Islanders are the No. 5 1P Under team at 34-26 for a combined 67-50. That’s a 57.3% win rate (compared to Tuesday’s 55.8% for the Kings and Wild), yet we’re still getting +105, though some books were dealing +100 or -105 overnight.
Blackhawks +1.5 +125 at Stars: This is a smaller play for yours truly, but I believe it has value. The Blackhawks are still among the worst teams in the NHL while the Stars lead the Central Division, but Dallas is on a four-game losing streak and I feel the full-game money line shouldn’t be around -400. In case this is a close game, I prefer to just take the Blackhawks +1.5 as we still get plus-money.
Wednesday CBB Best Bet
Providence +7.5 at UConn: We see this as a value play as these teams are pretty equal by just about every measure (both are 20-7 with UConn ranked No. 18 while Providence is No. 20). In addition, Providence is 12-4 in the Big East while UConn is only 9-7, plus the Friars won the earlier meeting this season, though that was at home and this is on the road. However, as we’ve written many times, home-field-advantage hasn’t been as strong across all sports since the pandemic. We’ll take the big head-start here with the +7.5 or at least +7.
