Weekend wagers: Seven bets to make on seven sports

By Case Keefer (contact)

Saturday, Feb. 17, 2024 | 2 a.m.

Football season is finished, but it’s not all bad news for sports bettors.

Not for this sports bettor at least. Plenty of other seasons are just getting under way or inching towards the good parts of the year.

With that in mind, I’m ecstatic to relaunch Weekend Wagers for a fifth consecutive year. Originally started in 2020 when sports were just coming back in full-force, this column has gone on to be a resounding success with a profit of more than $32,000.

Thanks to Lamar Jackson for slightly boosting that bottom line in the near month since the last Talking Points weekend betting column — the football-centric Sunday Sweats. Jackson lifted his second Most Valuable Player trophy at the NFL honors ceremony here before the Super Bowl to cash an 18-to-1 future from before the season.

The column whiffed on seven other future bets that were still pending at the time of the last column, but Jackson’s coup was enough to make for an overall win on NFL futures. I replenished the suddenly-barren pending futures — always available at the bottom of the page — with a piece in the latest edition of  Las Vegas Weekly and will add a couple more in this column.

But Weekend Wagers is mostly about sports happening currently, and I’ve got bets lined up on five events happening over the next two days.

Football season was success; let’s stay headed in the right direction.

Read on for this weekend’s seven bets on seven sports. Odds are the best currently available in Las Vegas at publication time with the sports book noted. Each sport has its own record with year to date performance tracked. Plays outside the column will be linked and tracked in the record at the bottom of the page. As a programming note, the column will not run next week but will return on March 2.

Golf (0-0, $0): Rory McIlroy -124 head-to-head in third round of Genesis Invitational vs. Collin Morikawa (Circa Sports)

$248 to win $200

McIlroy should be in contention this week at Riviera in Los Angeles. The only reason he’s not — sitting 11 strokes back of leader Patrick Cantlay at 2-under par — is a blow-up at the end of his first round where he had back-to-back double bogeys and then another bogey all in the final four holes. Such blowups are an unfortunate part of the golf legend’s game, although a small part of his game and a factor that doesn’t strike too often. I think it’s highly unlikely he loses his composure and lets it strike again this weekend. McIlroy would need some meltdown like that to justify this line, which prices him and Morikawa way too closely. Morikawa is a fine player — clearly in the second tier of the PGA Tour currently — but not on McIlroy’s level. Morikawa should be a bigger underdog than this in a head-to-head against McIlroy on almost any course, let alone one that so strongly rewards driving distance where the latter holds his most pronounced advantage.

College basketball (2-0, $450): TCU +1.5 at Kansas State (BetMGM)

$220 to win $200

Kansas State may have just played its best two-game stretch of the year, at least in conference play. The Wildcats knocked off the Jayhawks in Manhattan, Kan., last week before putting a scare into BYU in Provo, Utah — covering easily in both games. But I’m not buying the ascent. Kansas State had looked like one of the worst teams in the Big 12 before that, losing four straight games and failing to cover in five consecutive. The Wildcats are extremely well-coached by Jerome Tang, but don’t have the talent to hang in the upper- to middle-class of the conference this year. TCU does. Kansas State has neither the athleticism nor the size to keep up with TCU if the latter plays to its baseline. The Horned Frogs should be the slight favorite, not the slight underdog, here.

NHL (1-1, $0): New Jersey Devils -135 vs. Philadelphia Flyers (Circa Sports)

$270 to win $200

The Devils remain one of the most beaten-up teams in the NHL, but at least they’ve gotten their best player back. Jack Hughes, who might have been leading the Hart Trophy race as the NHL’s most valuable player early in the season, has been back since after the All-Star break and is inching towards 100%. The betting market just doesn’t quite reflect it yet. And while the Devils might be undervalued, the Flyers are overvalued. Philadelphia has outperformed its underlying metrics on the year, including in a recent run that’s seen the Flyers win four of five games since coming back from the All-Star break. Pressed into full-time action, rookie goaltender Samuel Ersson has been a revelation but some regression is likely going forward. Philadelphia has just as many injuries as New Jersey too. The Devils were a -160 favorite in this same matchup at home in December, and the drop in price is too much.  

UFC (0-0, $0): Mackenzie Dern to win by submission vs. Amanda Lemos at UFC 298 at +300 (STN Sports)

$200 to win $600

The grappling ace’s odds to win the fight have dropped from as high as +180 to as low as +105, but the submission prop hasn’t followed at a sufficient rate. Dern is no guarantee to beat the hard-hitting former No. 1 contender, but if she does beat her, the most likely way is by slapping on a submission and forcing a tap. The odds gap between the outright win and the win by submission is too wide. It’s not like Lemos is immune to getting stopped by submission considering Jessica Andrade choked her out less than two years ago. Dern is inconsistent and therefore untrustworthy, but she can beat almost anyone when she’s at her best. With this potential payout, it’s worth gambling that she shows up at her best tonight in Anaheim, Calif.   

NASCAR (0-0, $0): Martin Truex Jr. -105 vs. Kyle Larson head-to-head in Daytona 500 (Caesars/William Hill)

$210 to win $200

Larson is the best stock-car driver in the world right now, but his one weakness is on superspeedways like Daytona. Some would apply the same criticism to Truex, but that would be misguided. Truex has no wins at Daytona, sure, but he’s been much more competitive than Larson throughout his career there and has flashed the speed to threaten for a win. There might be no better chance than this year with Truex’s manufacturer, Toyota, looking poised for success. Chevrolet, Larson’s manufacturer, wasn’t nearly as fast in Thursday’s pair of duel races. The volatile nature of racing on big tracks like Daytona means no driver should be favored too widely over another, but Truex could at least be -115 or so against Larson.  

MLS (0-0, $0): Inter Miami to win MLS Cup at +300 (BetFred at Mohegan Sun Sportsbook at Virgin Hotels)

$500 to win $1,500

As long as Lionel Messi stays healthy, the pink-kitted guys on the pitch should roll, right? I realize that’s not the most astute analysis, but that’s really what this bet boils down to. Inter Miami displayed what they were capable of when the world’s best soccer player joined its team a year ago by rolling to a Leagues Cup title. It never got a chance to do the same in the MLS season because Messi was injured and out for the final stretch when the team was tasked was erasing a rough start. But all reports are that Messi is ready to go this year ahead of the new season beginning next week. That’s bad news for the rest of the league. These odds are as low as +180 elsewhere, at some of the world’s sharpest sports books that take seven-figure bets on soccer. It’s far more likely that those odds are correct than that domestic sports books are pricing Inter Miami more efficiently.

WNBA (0-0, $0): New York Liberty to win WNBA Championship at +250 (Caesars/William Hill)

$500 to win $1,250

I guess I’ll never be labeled as a homer this year. After eschewing the Vegas Golden Knights and betting on a divisional rival to win the Stanley Cup earlier in the week, I’m going one step farther and calling for the end of the Las Vegas Aces potential dynasty. Or at least a road bump. The WNBA, which doesn’t start until May, looks like a two-team race again between the Liberty and Aces. But, unlike at this same time a year ago, the two teams aren’t priced as relatively even. And I think they should be. The Liberty beat the Aces in three of five meetings before last year’s championship series when the latter prevailed 3-1. Las Vegas could be slightly weakened this year while New York could conceivably get better with its Big Three star group now more comfortable with each other. The Aces might be the most likely champion, but they shouldn’t be the odds-on favorite right now.

2024 Weekend betting column year to date: 14-11, $1,140.87

Weekend betting column all-time: 672-718-11, $32,421.87 

Previous pending wagers: Kansas to win 2024 NCAA Tournament at 14-to-1 ($200 to win $2,800); Edmonton Oilers to win 2024 Stanley Cup Final at 12-to-1 ($250 to win $3,000); Cleveland Cavaliers to win Central division at 3-to-1 ($300 to win $900); Victor Wembanyama to win NBA Rookie of the Year at +125 ($400 to win $500); Rudy Gobert to win NBA Defensive Player of the Year at 5-to-1 ($300 to win $1,500); South Carolina women's basketball to win NCAA Tournament at +450 ($400 to win $1,800); Oregon -1.5 -102 vs. Ohio State in Week 7 ($306 to win $300); Arizona to win NCAA Tournament at 12-to-1 ($200 to win $2,400); Xander Schauffele to win the Masters ($100 to win $2,800); Los Angeles Clippers to finish with Western Conference No. 1 seed ($200 to win $520); Florida Panthers to win Stanley Cup at 10-to-1 ($250 to win $2,500); New York Yankees to win World Series ($300 to win $3,000); Christopher Bell to win NASCAR Cup championship at 12-to-1 ($200 to win $2,400); Patrick Mahomes to win 2024-2025 NFL MVP at +750 ($350 to win $2,625); Kansas City Chiefs to win Super Bowl 59 at 9-to-1 ($300 to win $2,700)

Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or [email protected]. Follow Case on Twitter at twitter.com/casekeefer.Case Keefer can be reached at 702-948-2790 or