{"id":22233,"date":"2012-03-14T13:38:10","date_gmt":"2012-03-14T18:38:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/?p=22233"},"modified":"2012-03-14T13:38:10","modified_gmt":"2012-03-14T18:38:10","slug":"ncaa-bracket-2012-picks-long-beach-state-49ers-vs-new-mexico-lobos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/ncaa-bracket-2012-picks-long-beach-state-49ers-vs-new-mexico-lobos-22233\/","title":{"rendered":"NCAA Bracket 2012 Picks: Long Beach State 49ers vs. New Mexico Lobos"},"content":{"rendered":"

No. 12 Long Beach State 49ers vs. No. 5 New Mexico Lobos
\nThursday, 3\/15\/12, 4:10 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TBS
\nOpening Point Spread:\u00a0 New Mexico -4.5
\nCurrent Betting Line:\u00a0 New Mexico -4
\nOpening Total:\u00a0 133
\nCurrent Total:\u00a0 136.5
\nOdds Courtesy of Bookmaker<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"Week<\/a>
The New Mexico Lobos are 5-0 ATS as a neutral court favorite<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Long Beach State will open the 2012 NCAA Tournament against the New Mexico Lobos inside the Rose Garden in Portland, Ore.\u00a0 The 49ers are the 12th seed in the Western Regional and will be making their ninth appearance in this event.\u00a0 Point guard Casper Ware is certainly the player to watch, as he scored 33 points in the Big West Conference Tournament championship game against the UCSB Gauchos last week.\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019ve been trying to make it for three years now,\u201d stated Ware after the game.\u00a0 Long Beach State is 12-7 ATS when playing a team with a winning record this year.<\/p>\n

The 49ers are certainly hoping that senior guard Larry Anderson will be ready to return to the lineup in this contest, as the Big West Defensive Player of the Year missed the conference tournament with an injury.\u00a0 Ware is still the main player in becoming the seventh player in Big West history to repeat as conference player of the year. He has scored in double figures in 50 of the last 52 games.<\/p>\n

New Mexico earned an automatic berth into the Big Dance due to capturing the Mountain West Conference tournament, as it tallied three wins that included victories over the San Diego State Aztecs and UNLV Runnin\u2019 Rebels.\u00a0 The Lobos enter the tournament on a roll, winning five consecutive games and head coach Steve Alford is poised to lead his squad deep into the NCAA Tournament.\u00a0 \u201cOur guys have been playing good basketball all season,\u201d stated Alford this week.\u00a0 New Mexico is 23-7 ATS on the year and the \u201cover\u201d is 16-13 in that span.<\/p>\n

The Lobos have won 20 or more games in a season for the 24th time, including all five seasons under Alford.\u00a0 New Mexico is led by Drew Gordon, who averaged a double-double in the MWC Tournament and earned MVP honors in the event.\u00a0 He finished just behind San Diego State\u2019s Jamaal Franklin in capturing Player of the Year honors during the regular season.\u00a0 He led the conference in shooting 56.9 percent from the floor and was third in averaging 13.8 points per game.\u00a0 The program will be making its second NCAA tournament appearance under Alford, capturing a win over Montana in 2010 before being bounced out by Washington in the round of 32.<\/p>\n

Bettors will likely back the Lobos due to their 9-1 ATS mark versus non-conference opponents, while the 49ers are 5-7 ATS versus Mountain West Conference opponents.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t miss out on a winning season and let the college basketball handicappers at Maddux Sports line your pockets with cash.\u00a0 Long term packages are available now!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No. 12 Long Beach State 49ers vs. No. 5 New Mexico Lobos Thursday, 3\/15\/12, 4:10 PM EST, TV:\u00a0 TBS Opening Point Spread:\u00a0 New Mexico -4.5 Current Betting Line:\u00a0 New Mexico -4 Opening Total:\u00a0 133 Current Total:\u00a0 136.5 Odds Courtesy of Bookmaker Long Beach State will open the 2012 NCAA Tournament against the New Mexico Lobos […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":181,"featured_media":5552,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1444],"tags":[5962,5940,6369,5938,508,3,2493],"class_list":["post-22233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-college-basketball","category-headlines","tag-big-west-conference","tag-casper-ware","tag-drew-gordon","tag-long-beach-state-49ers","tag-mountain-west-conference","tag-ncaa-tournament","tag-new-mexico-lobos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/181"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22233"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22234,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22233\/revisions\/22234"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.madduxsports.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}