Harvick crushes field to win Gateway truck race

Autoracing Betting Lines

07/17/2010 - Madison, IL (Sportsbook Betting Lines) - Neither a stiff neck nor scorching heat could stop Kevin Harvick from winning Saturday's 200-mile Camping World Truck Series race with a dominating performance at Gateway International Raceway.

The CampingWorld.com 200 at Gateway was scheduled for Friday night, but a lengthy power outage around the 1.25-mile track forced postponement until the following day.

Harvick, who was complaining of a stiff neck before the start of the race, started on the pole and led 143 of 160 laps. He held a sizeable lead before the fifth and final caution came with 36 laps remaining. When the race resumed, Harvick quickly pulled away from the field and then easily beat his fellow Sprint Cup series competitor Brad Keselowski by 5.2 seconds for his third victory of the season and the ninth of his truck career.

"Physically, I feel okay," Harvick said. "I'm just so nervous about moving somewhere I shouldn't and catching my neck. It felt a lot better the hotter it got in [the truck], so that was a good thing."

Harvick and Keselowski are among several drivers who ran in the truck race and are scheduled to compete in tonight's 250-mile Nationwide Series event here.

Temperatures during the truck race soared to around 95 degrees, with the heat index well over 100 degrees.

"I feel good, but I'm just a little hot and sweaty," second-place finisher Keselowski said. "I'll go back to the bus, take a nice shower and get ready for the Nationwide race tonight. I think we have even a better car over there than we had a truck over here. This truck was pretty good."

Johnny Sauter finished third, while Todd Bodine, the series points leader, took the fourth spot. Matt Crafton completed the top-five.

Timothy Peters, rookie Austin Dillon, who won last week at Iowa, Aric Almirola, Brian Ickler and Mike Skinner, last year's race winner at Gateway, finished sixth through 10th, respectively.

Bodine padded his lead to 101 points over Almirola.

Ron Hornaday Jr. finished a disappointing 26th. Hornaday was running in the second spot in the early going, but suffered a mechanical problem and eventually fell 10 laps down. The four-time defending series champion has yet to win a race this season after posting six victories, including a record five races in a row, during his 2009 title season.

On lap 80, Ricky Carmichael and Jeffrey Earnhardt were involved in a hard crash. Mike Skinner bumped Carmichael and turned him around into the wall. As his truck then slid down the track, Earnhardt could not avoid the incident, as slammed into the rear of Carmichael's truck. Both drivers were not injured during the incident.

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NCAA Football Betting : USC's reward: Top spot in Top 25

NEW YORK (AP) -By staying away from the cupcakes, Southern California earned itself a slim new ranking.

No. 1 always seems to fit USC.

Southern California jumped two spots to No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25 on Tuesday, rewarded by voters for opening the season with a dominant performance on the road against a BCS conference opponent.

Georgia and Ohio State, the preseason Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, started their seasons with glorified scrimmages at home against FCS (formerly I-AA) teams. USC, however, traveled across country to face Virginia and could not have been more impressive in a 52-7 victory.

Georgia fell to No. 2 and Ohio State to No 3.

"We realize that rankings so early in a season are certainly fluid. But rankings do help establish a pecking order for things later in the season," USC coach Pete Carroll said in a statement. "As for moving into the No. 1 spot, it's nice to know that people think highly of our team."

Since reaching No. 1 on Dec. 7, 2003, the final-regular season AP poll of that season, USC has been No. 1 in 39 polls, by far the most of any team during that time.

"Some have said the voters are taking our schedule into consideration," Carroll said. "Our philosophy has always been to schedule outstanding opponents. We need to play challenging games like we just did, traveling across the country to open the season at Virginia. Games like that bring out our best and make us stronger as a team."

The latest voting was close. USC received 21 first-place votes and 1,539 points from the 65-member media panel. Georgia had 20 first-place votes and 1,506 points. Ohio State got 15 first-place votes and 1,497 points.

"I'd say we've evolved as pollsters," said Stewart Mandel of SI.com, who moved USC up to No. 1. "In the past, voters just kind of automatically moved teams up and kept teams where they were if they won."

Georgia beat Georgia Southern 45-21 on Saturday and Ohio State opened with a 43-0 win over Youngstown State.

"There's a bit of a growing backlash for the amount of teams that open with I-AA cupcakes," said Mandel, whose book "Bowls, Polls and Tattered Souls" chronicles college football's controversies. "To see a team [USC] go on the road and play a New Year's Day bowl team from last season, and not only play them but destroy them, how could you not reward that team?"

USC also jumped past Georgia to No. 1 in the USA Today coaches' poll, which has the same top five as the AP poll.

"It's definitely a privilege to be No. 1. But it's not heartbreaking to me if we drop," Georgia offensive lineman Josh Davis said. "It doesn't matter right now what we're ranked. What matters is our next game and right now, that's Central Michigan. The only time the polls matter is in December. That's when the polls matter."

While the Bulldogs opened easy, their schedule ultimately should be as difficult as any team's. Georgia's big nonconference test is at No. 15 Arizona State on Sept. 20. The Bulldogs also face six Southeastern Conference rivals that've been ranked in the first two polls.

As for Ohio State, the Buckeyes play at USC on Sept. 13 before getting into the Big Ten schedule.

But of the teams in this week's top 10, USC and Texas are the only ones that don't play an FCS opponent, and the Trojans are the only team that doesn't play a team from a non-BCS conference.

Get the latest 2009 BCS Championship odds at MySportsbook.com.

The last team to drop from No. 1 after a victory was USC last season. LSU jumped from No. 2 to No. 1 when it beat Tulane 34-9, the same week the Trojans edged Washington 27-24 on the road.

The last preseason No. 1 team to lose the top spot after winning its opening game was Florida in 2001. The Gators beat Marshall 49-14, but preseason No. 2 Miami opened with a 33-7 victory over Penn State and the Hurricanes jumped to No. 1 with Florida slipping to second.

The next four teams in the new Top 25 stayed the same: No. 4 Oklahoma (two first-place votes), No. 5 Florida (five first-place votes), No. 6 Missouri (one first-place vote), No. 7 LSU (one first-place vote) and No. 8 West Virginia.

No. 9 Auburn and No. 10 Texas each moved up a spot, taking advantage of Clemson's big drop. Clemson, ninth in the preseason, fell out after losing 34-10 to Alabama on Saturday.

Also falling out after losses were Virginia Tech, Pittsburgh and Tennessee.

Moving into the rankings were No. 21 Fresno State, No. 22 Utah, No. 23 UCLA and No. 24 South Carolina.

Alabama moved up 11 spots after its big victory over Clemson.

The second 10 started with No. 11 Wisconsin, followed by Texas Tech, Alabama and Kansas. BYU and Arizona State were tied for 15th. Rivals BYU and Utah are both ranked for the first time since 1996.

South Florida was No. 17, ahead of Oregon, Penn State and Wake Forest at No. 20.

The final five were all the teams to move into the ranking, except for Illinois, which dropped four spots and tied South Carolina for No. 24.

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