College Basketball Betting News at LinesMaker

Defending Champ UConn Opens Practice

STORRS, Conn. —Connecticut’s bas­ket­ball teams showed off their skills in front of their fans for the first time since the men brought home the program’s third national cham­pi­onship and the women returned from their 12th Final Four. Men’s coach Jim Cal­houn has said he believes his team may be more tal­ented than the one that beat But­ler in April. They showed off their ath­leti­cism Fri­day for more than 10,000 fans who came out to watch the school’s annual “First Night” show. Fresh­man guard Ryan Boa­tright, who is gen­er­ously listed in the media guide at 6-feet,... 

A Special Offer From Our Sponsor

The likely cause for this is that your browser, feed reader, or email appli­ca­tion is con­fig­ured to not accept cook­ies, or your reader may launch an exter­nal browser to view links with­out shar­ing cookies. If you’re using Inter­net Explorer, make sure your pri­vacy set­ting is at medium or below.Select ‘Inter­net Options’ from the ‘Tools’ menu in your browser win­dowClick the Pri­vacy tabAdjust your pri­vacy set­ting if nec­es­saryIf you’re using a reader that embeds Inter­net Explorer (exam­ples: Microsoft Out­look, Out­look Express, Feed Demon), you’ll... 

Festive Atmosphere at Hoosiers Practice

BLOOMINGTON, Ind. —Indi­ana turned a Sat­ur­day night warmup prac­tice into a regular-season atmosphere. Assem­bly Hall was almost full. The pep band played its usual reper­toire of songs and fans repeat­edly chanted the names of play­ers and recruits. Even Eric Gor­don and D.J. White, for­mer Hoosiers now play­ing in the NBA, came back to Bloomington. Fans were fes­tive, loud and enthu­si­as­tic, just the kind of atmos­phere coach Tom Crean needs to rebuild his home-court advan­tage this season. “If we play close to as good as you cheer and sup­port this team, we’ll be... 

Xavier C Frease Suspended Indefinitely

CINCINNATI —Xavier senior cen­ter Kenny Frease has been sus­pended indef­i­nitely by coach Chris Mack. The Mus­ke­teers coach said Fri­day that the 7-foot Frease “did not ful­fill all the respon­si­bil­i­ties of a Xavier bas­ket­ball player.” Frease, a pre­sea­son second-team selec­tion in the Atlantic 10, aver­aged 11.7 points and 7.1 rebounds last season. The Mus­ke­teers, who have won or shared the last five A-10 regular-season titles, were the run­away choice as the pre­sea­son No. 1 in the conference.  

Hopes High as Ohio State Returns 3 Stars

COLUMBUS, Ohio —In an oth­er­wise dreary 11 months at Ohio State filled with NCAA prob­lems, a bit of sal­va­tion could be just around the corner. The men’s bas­ket­ball team of coach Thad Matta is com­ing off a ster­ling 34–3 record and has three stars back. The Buck­eyes held their media day on Thurs­day and—unlike their foot­ball brethren who are 3–3 and down in the dumps—were jok­ing about the lofty expec­ta­tions sur­round­ing the team. “It’s a moti­va­tional thing when a fan comes up to you and says, ‘You have to win this year’,” star for­ward Jared... 

Preseason Top 25 (And One): From the Original Guy (And One)

By Gary Par­rish and Jeff GoodmanCBSSports.com Col­lege Bas­ket­ball Insid­er­sOct. 12, 2011 Our first tag-team effort at the Pre­sea­son Top 25 (and one) wasn’t nearly as com­pli­cated as we expected. Par­rish used senior­ity to place Ken­tucky one spot in front of UConn (the Huskies were Goodman’s choice for No. 2), but there weren’t many major issues for the remain­der of the Top 10. The dif­fi­cult part came on the back end of the poll — where Good­man still has a dif­fi­cult time putting his alma mater, Ari­zona, all the way up at No. 14 now that Der­rick Williams... 

Krzyzewski Won’t Mind ACC Growing to 16

DURHAM, N.C. —Mike Krzyzewski sup­ports the Atlantic Coast Conference’s recent expan­sion to 14 teams—and wouldn’t mind if the league keeps growing. The Hall of Fame coach at Duke offered his opin­ions Wednes­day dur­ing a wide-ranging press con­fer­ence as part of his team’s media day in which he dis­cussed the chang­ing faces of both his ros­ter and the ACC. “I think you have to con­tinue to explore” expan­sion ques­tions, Krzyzewski said. “Is 14 the right num­ber? Will 16 be? I don’t know if I’m in the minor­ity, majority—I don’t talk to any­body about... 

Ex-Valpo Coach Drew, Wife Have Cancer

INDIANOLIS —Homer Drew taught dozens of bas­ket­ball play­ers how to beat the odds on the bas­ket­ball court. Now, those play­ers are exhort­ing their ex-coach to take the same atti­tude into his own bat­tle with cancer. Val­paraiso ath­letic depart­ment spokesman Aaron Leav­itt con­firmed Tues­day night that both the 67-year-old Drew and his wife, Janet, were recently diag­nosed with can­cer. The fam­ily is with­hold­ing addi­tional details about the ill­nesses, for now. “Janet and myself both appre­ci­ate all the thoughts and prayers dur­ing this most dif­fi­cult... 

Did ESPN Fuel Big East’s Demise?

The ongo­ing story of con­fer­ence realign­ment has been fas­ci­nat­ing to fol­low because it changes by the day, because it touches prac­ti­cally every rel­e­vant ath­letic depart­ment on some level, and because it’s just plain crazy. We’ve already seen the Big 12 remove Dan Beebe as its com­mis­sioner, TCU decide to pay $ 5 mil­lion to leave one league for another league before it ever even started com­pet­ing in the pre­vi­ous league, and now a con­fer­ence with the words “Big” and “East” in its name has only six football-playing mem­bers and is con­sid­er­ing... 

Indiana High School Star Returns Home After Michigan Plane Crash

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — The fam­ily of a high school bas­ket­ball star from Fort Wayne says he has returned home more than three months after suf­fer­ing a seri­ous head injury in a Michi­gan plane crash that killed his father and stepmother. Austin Hatch, who had accepted a schol­ar­ship to play bas­ket­ball at Michi­gan start­ing in 2013, still faces a long recov­ery from the June 24 crash that also left him with a punc­tured lung and bro­ken ribs and col­lar­bone, accord­ing to a fam­ily state­ment emailed Sun­day to the Jour­nal Gazette. “While Austin has made great improve­ments,...