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The NC Asheville-Arkansas Little Rock line has remained steady around -4 favoring NC Asheville since opening late Sunday night. This game is one of two to be played in the first ever First Four of the 2011 NCAA Basketball Tournament. Odds were available at BetUS.com here.
The Associated Press reports that North Carolina-Asheville’s coach and players received a key to the city before heading to Dayton, Ohio for the First Four game (being played on Tuesday at 6:30 pm ET. The Arkansas-Little Rock squad got to fly in their first ever chartered flight.
The two teams will open the expanded 68-team tournament. In previous years, there was only one play-in game for a 65-team tournament.
There were few stats to really go by in determining which team has the upper hand here, however, Gambling911.com does note that underdog Arkansas Little Rock is 6-1 Against The Spread in all tournament games to date.
After dropping below .500 earlier in the season, UALR guard Solomon Bozeman called a player-only meeting and addressed the situation.
“I just told everybody to keep believing and keep fighting,” Bozeman said. “’We’ve got to have each other’s back, and this is going to be a life-long memory if we can get this done.’”
As a result, the Trojans enter the Tournament 19-16. That is a dramatic improvement over the 8-22 season they had last year.
We just kept fighting and kept believing in each other,” Bozeman said. “We stayed together.”
- Dan Shapiro, Gambling911.com
