UCLA, Kansas both expected to keep rolling

UCLA and Kansas won their first-round NCAA tournament games by a combined 65 points and Las Vegas oddsmakers expect both teams to have an easy time again in today’s second-round games.

On Thursday, the Bruins covered a 31 1/2 -point spread when they crushed Mississippi Valley State, 70-29. As a reward, No. 1-seeded UCLA has been made a 10 1/2 -point favorite over ninth-seeded Texas A&M; for its West Regional matchup at the Honda Center.

In the Midwest Regional, the No. 1-seeded Jayhawks were 22-point favorites over Portland State and covered the line with an 85-61 victory. Today, Kansas will face eighth-seeded Nevada Las Vegas and the Jayhawks are listed as 13-point favorites for the game in Omaha.

Based on the results of the first round, UCLA (32-3) and Kansas (32-3) deserve to be heavy favorites for today’s games. But both teams will face difficult opponents.

Texas A&M; (25-10) has won four in a row against the spread, which includes a six-point loss to Kansas in the Big 12 Conference tournament. The Aggies, however, have shown the ability to lose big in recent weeks in losing three games by at least 17 points.

UNLV (27-7) has won five games in a row, including an impressive 71-58 victory over Kent State in the first round. The Runnin’ Rebels, however, have failed to cover three of the last four times they’ve been underdogs.

Final note: In first-round blowout victories, both UCLA and Kansas failed to cover the over line. The over/under combined point total for the Bruins’ game against Texas A&M; is 125 points, and the over/under total for the Jayhawks game against UNLV is 136.5 points.

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Baseball

With the start of Major League Baseball’s regular season near, it’s a good time to look back at the 2007 umpire chart.

Among umpires who worked at least 26 games last season, Gerry Davis and Larry Vanover each averaged more than 11 runs a game when they were behind the plate.

In the 34 games Davis worked, the average combined score was 11.76 runs with the over having a 22-12 record in those games. Vanover worked 36 games with an average of 11.22 runs with the over having a 23-13 record in his games.

For baseball proposition bettors, Paul Schrieber was the umpire to follow if you were looking for plenty of walks in a game last season. Schrieber led all umpires who worked at least 32 games by averaging 8.6 total base on balls per outing.

Davis wasn’t too far behind with a 7.8 base-on-balls average, followed by Dana DeMuth, who averaged 7.6.

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Boxing

Lightweight champion Joel Casamayor is an underdog for his fight against Michael Katsidis tonight at the Morongo Casino in Cabazon.

Casamayor, who will turn 37 in July, would pay $160 on a $100 bet if he wins, according to Sportsbetting.com. Katsidis, 27, would pay $100 on a $200 bet if he wins.

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lonnie.white@latimes.com