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Beyond March Madness, colleges face sports betting issue

Multiple Contributors Apr 3, 2025, 09:04 AM ET A crime ring travels around the nation, inviting athletes to parties where there’s gambling. The plan is to put the student-athletes in debt and compromise them for future exploitation. involving Jontay Porter, placed bets on at least two New Orleans men’s basketball games this season, ESPN previously […]

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April 4, 2025

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Beyond March Madness, colleges face sports betting issue

Multiple Contributors

Apr 3, 2025, 09:04 AM ET

A crime ring travels around the nation, inviting athletes to parties where there’s gambling. The plan is to put the student-athletes in debt and compromise them for future exploitation.

involving Jontay Porter, placed bets on at least two New Orleans men’s basketball games this season, ESPN previously reported. Four New Orleans players were suspended after a late-January game, reportedly because of an investigation into sports gambling. The Privateers finished the season 4-27.

“For us, it seems to point back to an organized crime ring that’s not just localized in the Southland footprint,” Grant said. “It is going on around the country.”

Bookmakers first began noticing anomalies during the 2023-24 college basketball season and pointed to a UAB-Temple game in March 2024 that raised significant concern. The other incidents allegedly occurred in the low level of Division I, often featuring losing teams. Mississippi Valley State. Eastern Michigan. North Carolina A&T. Investigations are ongoing, and public details are scant about who’s behind the suspicious betting and why certain games and programs were targeted.

There has not been a point-shaving scheme in college basketball that has resulted in a conviction since legalized sports betting began spreading around the U.S. in 2018. The NCAA and its member institutions are concerned that the streak is in jeopardy.

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“It’s just really fragile,” said Mark Hicks, the NCAA’s managing director of enforcement who spearheads the association’s anti-gambling education efforts. “We want to believe that these games are unpredictable, that people don’t have ulterior motives, that they’re playing to win. [But] it’s a fragile system.”

Gambling industry sources say the suspicious bets in several games were on the point spreads and over/unders on first halves. These bets on games involving small-conference teams might seem like a small-time opportunity to the casual gambler or observer. Betting limits on such games are typically a few thousand dollars at sportsbooks, after all.

Gambling syndicates, however, aim to circumvent the limits by working as a team and sharing information and sportsbook accounts, according to sportsbook sources in the U.S. and offshore. One of the men charged in connection with the Porter case had a “network of co-conspirators across the country” and “orchestrated and participated in numerous fraudulent wager schemes” that “resulted in potentially millions of dollars’ worth of illicit profits,” according to a court document filed by federal prosecutors.

The sportsbook sources said bettors with inside information tend to wager in a coordinated fashion rather than place large individual bets that can trigger compliance checks. That’s what occurred with some of the betting against teams under investigation: A surge of action began showing up and didn’t stop, despite the lines moving against them, a major red flag, the sources said.

While the NCAA braces for what comes next, it remains concerned about individual prop bets, which can be easily influenced. Over/under bets on stats such as points or rebounds can be tempting, and seemingly innocent, ways for players “to place bets on themselves,” Hicks said.

All of this makes arguably the most difficult job in college athletics even more difficult. Just how do you get the message out to over 500,000 student-athletes, very few of whom are great players on great teams, that they are just as appealing to scheming gamblers as a future NBA lottery pick? How do you get them to realize that money can be made on mostly anonymous players in mostly ignored games via mostly obscure bets?

“I mean, it’s just unnerving as an athletic director to try and get your fingers around it,” said High Point AD Dan Hauser. “And really the way you can get a handle on it is just to overeducate and overcommunicate.”

The NCAA, conferences and on-campus compliance offices attempt to work in lockstep to provide information to athletes. There are guest speakers, in-person sessions, online programs and so on and so on.

“In terms of educating athletes, we [constantly repeat that] you don’t have to be the star player in order to be at risk. That is something that is a key message point in every delivery session on campus,” Hicks said.

“That’s why they go to Divisions I, II and III and speak to all high-profile athletes and also nonrevenue-generating sports to drive home that message,” Hicks continued. “You know it can affect everyone in every sport regardless your competition level.”

Arizona State.

The now 53-year-old works as an ambassador for Epic Global Solutions, a firm that partners with the NCAA and is focused on educating athletes about gambling harm. He doesn’t mince words when it comes to his current mission — stop someone from becoming the next player to fall into trouble, especially in this era when sports wagering is on every phone and advertisements are on every media site.

“You’re not going to stop gambling, can’t stop it,” Smith told ESPN. “But we can educate them of the consequences.”

Smith remains concerned that young athletes don’t understand the lengths that bad actors will go to to compromise them. Smith said coming out of high school in Dallas, gambling to him was shooting dice and playing cards. He was introduced to sports betting at Arizona State through campus bookmaker Benny Silman and agreed to participate in a point-shaving scheme in exchange for payment. In 1997, Smith pleaded guilty to conspiracy for what the feds alleged was point-shaving in four Sun Devils games during the 1993-94 season. He spent one year in prison.

As he tours the country, speaking with current athletes, he senses the same naivete about gambling that he once had.

“There’s a lot of them who are not educated on gambling, so they’ll be nonchalant about some information that gamblers can use, want,” Smith said. “This is some serious business. There are people out there that this is what they get paid to do, to look for situations like this.”

It may all sound like something out of Hollywood, which is a long way from some little campus in some small-time league.

That’s the problem, the NCAA says. And that’s the ongoing challenge.

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Men’s Volleyball Open NCAA Championship Against Penn State In Quarterfinals

Story Links The University of Hawai’i men’s volleyball team will open the NCAA Championship tournament with a quarterfinal round match against Penn State, Thursday, May 8 at the Covelli Center in Columbus, Ohio. The second-seeded Rainbow Warriors (26-5) and seventh-seeded Nittany Lions (15-15) will meet for the seventh time in the national […]

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The University of Hawai’i men’s volleyball team will open the NCAA Championship tournament with a quarterfinal round match against Penn State, Thursday, May 8 at the Covelli Center in Columbus, Ohio. The second-seeded Rainbow Warriors (26-5) and seventh-seeded Nittany Lions (15-15) will meet for the seventh time in the national tournament.

TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE:
NCAA Tournament Quarterfinals, Thursday, May 8
No. 3 seed UCLA vs. No. 6 seed Belmont Abbey, 11:00 a.m. ET
No. 2 seed Hawai’i vs. No. 7 seed Penn State, 1:30 p.m. ET
No. 1 seed Long Beach State vs. No. 8 seed Fort Valley State, 5:00 p.m. ET
No. 4 seed Loyola Chicago vs. No. 5 seed Pepperdine, 7:30 p.m. ET

NCAA Tournament Semifinals, Saturday, May 10
Semifinal #1, 5:00 p.m. ET
Semifinal #2, 8:00 p.m. ET

NCAA Tournament Finals, Monday, May 12
Championship, 7:00 p.m. ET

MATCH #32 – NCAA NC Men’s Volleyball Championship
Who				Quarterfinal – No. 2 seed Hawai’i (26-5) vs. No. 7 seed Penn State (15-15)
Date \| Time				Thursday, May 8 \| 1:30 p.m. ET (7:30 a.m. HT)
Location				Columbus, Ohio – Covelli Center
Television				None
Live Stream				ESPN+
Radio				ESPN Honolulu (1420AM/92.7FM). Tiff Wells (play-by-play)
Streaming Audio				ESPNHonolulu.com; Sideline Hawaii app
Live Stats				HawaiiAthletics.com
Game Notes				Hawai’i
Digital Program				Click Here
Social Media				@HawaiiMensVB \| #HawaiiMVB #WarriorBall25 \| @HawaiiMVB \| Facebook

SERIES HISTORY
Overall: UH leads 18-10
            In Honolulu: UH leads 14-8
            In University Park: UH leads 1-0
            Neutral: UH leads 3-2
Postseason: UH leads 4-2
Last Meeting: 3/14/25, UH 3-0
Streak: UH 2

MATCH NOTES

Hawai’i (26-5) returns to the NCAA Championship after missing the tournament last season, which ended a run of four straight appearances.

UH is making its 10th all-time NCAA Championship appearance with an 11-7 mark and two national championships (2021 & ’22).

UH has a 2-1 all-time record in the opening rounds of the tournament.

Head coach Charlie Wade has led UH to seven NCAA appearances in 16 seasons—all since 2015—with an 8-4 record.

UH made two previous trips to Columbus, Ohio for the NCAA Championship in 2017 (advanced to semifinals) and 2021 (won title).

Hawai’i and Penn State have met six times in the NCAA Championship with UH holding a 4-2 advantage. The teams met in the opening rounds twice (2015, ’17) and in the semifinals four times (1995, ’96, 2002, ’23). Three of the six meetings went to five sets.

UH’s six meetings against Penn State is the most against a single opponent at the NCAA Championship (twice each vs. UCLA, Ball State, and Long Beach State).

UH is the No. 2 seed in the tournament for the second consecutive time. In 2023, Hawai’i advanced to the title match against No. 1 seed UCLA and lost in four sets.

A UH victory would mark its ninth trip to the semifinals.

Hawai’i leads the all-time series, 18-10 including a 3-2 advantage at neutral sites.

UH and Penn State met on the second day of the OUTRIGGER Invitational in March in Honolulu with the Rainbow Warriors winning in straight sets.

The Nittany Lions (15-15) advanced to the NCAA quarterfinals after defeating Daemen in straight sets last Friday in an opening round match in Amherst, N.Y.

Penn State received the EIVA’s automatic bid to the tournament by virtue of a straight-set win over Princeton in the championship match to claim its 37th all-time conference title and 26th under head coach Mark Pavlik.

#HawaiiMVB

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TCU women first school outside of California to win NCAA beach volleyball championship | Spotlight

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TCU women first school outside of California to win NCAA beach volleyball championship

GULF SHORES, Ala. — TCU’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno came from behind to win the final match on Sunday as the second-seeded Horned Frogs wrapped up their first NCAA women’s beach volleyball championship with a 3-2 victory over No. 4 seed Loyola Marymount. TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA […]

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May 4, 2025

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TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA to win the title. The Trojans won the first two and the previous four, while the Bruins won two straight in 2018-19.

Alvarez and Moreno, who took a year off to play in the Olympics, returned to finish unbeaten in four years as a duo. Alvarez and Moreno dropped the first game 18-21 to LMU’s Michelle Shaffer and Anna Pelloia before rallying to win the final two 21-15 and 15-6.

The Lions (38-7) eliminated No. 5 seed USC in the quarterfinals and top-seed UCLA in the semifinals.

TCU threes pair Sofia Izuzquizal and Allanis Navas earned a point with a 21-16, 21-13 sweep.

Fours pair Anhelina Khmil and Ana Vergara also swept their way to a point with 21-14 and 21-19 wins. The duo finished 21-0 this season.

The Olympians finished off the championship as the Horned Frogs won 12 straight to end the season.

LMU twos pair Chloe Hooker and Vilhelmiina Prihti earned a point with a 21-16, 21-17 sweep. Fives pair Tanon Rosenthal and Giuliana Poletti Corrales had the other point with a pair of 21-16 wins.

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AP college sports: https://apnews.com/hub/college-sports

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TCU defeats LMU for NCAA Women’s Beach Volleyball title – Orange County Register

TCU’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno came from behind to win the final match as the second-seeded Horned Frogs wrapped up their first NCAA women’s beach volleyball championship with a 3-2 victory over No. 4 seed Loyola Marymount on Sunday at Gulf Shores, Ala. TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA […]

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May 4, 2025

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TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA to win the title. The Trojans won the first two and the previous four, while the Bruins won two straight in 2018-19.

The Lions (38-7) eliminated No. 5 seed USC in the quarterfinals and top-seed UCLA in the semifinals.TCU No. 3 pair Sofia Izuzquizal and Allanis Navas earned a point with a 21-16, 21-13 sweep of Abbey Thorup and Lisa Luini.

Anhelina Khmil and Ana Vergara also swept their way to a point with 21-14 and 21-19 win over Isabelle Reffel and Magdalena Rabitsch at No. 4.

The TCU duo finished 21-0 this season.

The Olympians finished off the championship as the Horned Frogs won 12 straight to end the season.

LMU twos pair Chloe Hooker and Vilhelmiina Prihti earned a point with a 21-16, 21-17 sweep of Hailey Hamlett and Maria Gonzalez, as Prihti surpassed Jessie Pritchard as LMU’s all-time winningest player with 110 wins.

At No. 5, LMU’s Tanon Rosenthal and Giuliana Poletti Corrales defeated Stacy Reeves and Denie Konstantinova 21-16, 21-16 to set up a decisive match on the final court.

TCU, which defeated No. 6 Cal Poly and No. 7 Texas to reach the final, completed its historic season 32-5, winning its final 12 matches.

LMU, which defeated No. 5 USC and No. 1 UCLA on Saturday to reach the final, finished 38-7.

The Lions are just the second program in school history to play in a National Championship event, joining the 2004 women’s water polo program.

The 38 wins are a program record and John Mayer became the first coach in school history to be named National Coach of the Year. The team also became the first in school history to win six consecutive conference titles.

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City of Manchester back on top at U19 Open National Championships

May 4, 2025 City of Manchester Head Coach Charles Booth was lost for words after his side became U19 Open champions at the GoCardless Swim England Water Polo National Age Group Championships. They defeated West London Penguin 12-10 in the final game of this year’s Championships at Coventry’s Alan Higgs Centre. The gold is Manchester’s […]

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May 4, 2025

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May 4, 2025

City of Manchester Head Coach Charles Booth was lost for words after his side became U19 Open champions at the GoCardless Swim England Water Polo National Age Group Championships.

They defeated West London Penguin 12-10 in the final game of this year’s Championships at Coventry’s Alan Higgs Centre.

The gold is Manchester’s first in this event since 2015 and saw them finally get the better of the club from the capital in this age group.

Two years ago, the two teams met in the U17 final with Penguin winning 13-4 and for Booth it was the group’s team spirit and hard work that got them over the line this time around.

“It’s pretty amazing, to be honest I’m lost for words,” Booth said.

“The lads have been brilliant, not just today but all season, and this is such a great way to finish it. I’m so proud of them, they deserve it.”

‘Credit to each and every one of them’

“It was close. I think what showed was the team spirit that we’ve got and the willingness to keep working for each other and keep going.

“First and second quarter we worked so hard and towards the end we were able to reap the rewards. Credit to each and every one of them and their work rate. They’ve all got bright futures in this sport.”

The two sides were closely matched throughout with Penguin edging the early stages and leading into half-time after Shai Saltman and Michelangelo Antonelli’s second period efforts.

It was in the third period where the game started to turn in the North West sides favour when Lucas Roxburgh fired in the opening two goals of the second half.

That opened the game up with Manchester coming from a goal down at the interval to lead 8-7 heading into the final eight minutes.

Roxburgh then grabbed his hat trick before a late brace from player of the match and tournament MVP George Billington put them three goals clear.

The event’s top scorer, Sidney Gruber, pulled two back for Penguin but Manchester were able to answer back and Tobias Khawar stayed strong in goal as they saw out the victory.

U17 Open gold medal match result and scorers

West London Penguin 10 – 12 City of Manchester (2-2, 2-1, 3-5, 3-4)

West London Penguin scorers: Shai Saltman (4), Sidney Gruber (3), Michelangelo Antonelli (2), Jack Benson

City of Manchester scorers: George Billington (2), Freddie Dean, Miles Kinloch (2), Oliver Salimbeni (2), Eli Wass, Yaroslav Shemanov, Lucas Roxburgh (3).

Cheltenham get their second bronze of the day

Cheltenham secured their second bronze medal of the day as their U19 Open team matched the club’s female counterparts by getting themselves on the podium.

They had to battle right to the end for it after opponents Watford bounced back from a disappointing second period.

A 4-0 second quarter score put the Gloucestershire-based side in to a commanding position but they let it slip as Watford pegged them back with Ilija Crompton bringing the match level at 10-10 with 2:13 left to play.

However, Cheltenham put in a spirited performance with Will Bamborough firing in what would turn out to be the winner less than a minute later to make it 11-10.

You can find the full match sheets and all the results from this weekend’s competition by visiting the live scoreboard page.

Images: Will Johnston Photography

U19 Open bronze medal match result and scorers

Cheltenham 11 – 10 Watford (3-3, 4-0, 2-3, 2-4)

Cheltenham scorers: Jack Hinton-Davies (3), Ryan Renders (2), Alfie Clarke, Noah Knights-Hume (2), Will Bamborough (3).

Watford scorers: Ed Carpenter (2), Dusan Crompton (3), Bertie Dix, Bailey Sapsed, Ilija Crompton, Michael Barrett, Gethin Dorrington.

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TCU Horned Frogs win NCAA women’s beach volleyball title

GULF SHORES, Ala. — TCU’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno came from behind to win the final match Sunday as the second-seeded Horned Frogs wrapped up their first NCAA women’s beach volleyball championship with a 3-2 victory over No. 4 seed Loyola Marymount. TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA to […]

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May 4, 2025

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TCU (32-5) is the first school other than USC and UCLA to win the title. The Trojans won the first two and the previous four, and the Bruins won two straight in 2018-19.

The Lions (38-7) eliminated No. 5 seed USC in the quarterfinals and top-seed UCLA in the semifinals.

TCU TAKES HOME THEIR FIRST EVER TITLE ON THE BEACH!

(2) @TCUBeachVB defeats (4) LMU, 3-2, to win their first National Championship in program history! #NCAABeachVB pic.twitter.com/wpZFetEKsR

— NCAA Women’s Volleyball (@NCAAVolleyball) May 4, 2025

TCU threes pair Sofia Izuzquiza and Allanis Navas earned a point with a 21-16, 21-13 sweep.

Fours pair Anhelina Khmil and Ana Vergara also swept their way to a point with 21-14 and 21-19 wins. The duo finished 21-0 this season.

The Olympians finished off the championship as the Horned Frogs won 12 straight to end the season.

LMU twos pair Chloe Hooker and Vilhelmiina Prihti earned a point with a 21-16, 21-17 sweep. Fives pair Tanon Rosenthal and Giuliana Poletti Corrales had the other point with a pair of 21-16 wins.

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