Hey, Jimmy Harris here with my brand new sports betting blog. I’ll be ranting and raving on the world of sports and betting on a daily basis, with no game being too small to lay some cash down on.

Every now and then I’ll give you a few picks, which can’t be too bad since I’m laying my own hard-earned cash on them as well.

While waiting for the Final Four to get started this weekend, I’ll have to get my basketball betting fix with a little NIT semifinals action on Tuesday night.

This year’s NIT has actually been pretty decent, and you can thank teams like Georgia and Temple for sneaking into the tourney and keeping the likes of Virginia Tech, Arizona State and Florida out of the Big Dance.

The NIT semis go in Madison Square Garden on Tuesday with surprising Massachusetts versus Florida, and Mississippi versus Ohio State. I have no allegiances to any of those schools, but I really hope Florida and Ohio State meet up in the final.

How sweet would that be to have the same two teams meet up in the NCAA final and the NIT final in back-to-back years? If the Gators and Buckeyes don’t get to the final, I may just skip it altogether out of spite.

From a bettor’s point of view (the only real point of view from which to look at sports), I’ll be taking the Gators at -4 and the Buckeyes at -2, both available at BetUS.com.

Everyone was saying how shocking it was that UMass upset Syracuse in the quarterfinals. How can it be shocking when the Minutemen already trounced the Orange earlier in the season? The real shock would be for the Minutemen to keep it going versus the Gators.

I love Nick Calathes and the hard-to-spell Marreese Speights. The Gators have won their NIT games by an average of 24 points so far! They’ll chew up and spit out UMass.

In the other NIT matchup, the Buckeyes will have a harder time with Ole Miss but they’ll do enough to cover the two-point spread. Jamar Butler has stepped out of Greg Oden’s shadow, which in the right light must have loomed 10 feet tall.

Also watch out for Kosta Koufos. Special K shot the lights out against Dayton in the quarters and he’ll be hard for the Rebels to stop.

One of my main ‘outs’ for action is . Check it out.

Jimmy Harris