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Onions

-Didn’t get to watch much basketball this weekend due to traveling, and didn’t see much Monday or Tuesday night due to trying to catch up on sleep lost from traveling. Lots of upsets and surprises, though, even if many weren’t that big of upsets. Marquette winning at Louisville was an eye-opener, but the Cardinals are hurting right now and the Warriors/Golden Eagles needed it badly. Great win for MU…at least until they lost at home to hot-shooting TCU last night.

Did catch a little bit on Saturday, and saw St. Joseph’s hit some of their 20 threes against Temple. Not surprising-the Hawks are blazing from outside and the Owls’ matchup zone is susceptible to that. Villanova is one team that has burnt Temple by finding the soft spots in the past, and those open areas are always there with the Matchup Zone. It’s just a matter of whether the shots go down or not.

Was disappointed in the little I saw of College of Charleston against The Citadel. Cougars were getting bombed by the lowly Bulldogs for 10 minutes, and I’m just not sure what to make of them. Fantastic defensively, but they get behind too often too early, and that’s going to come back and bite them eventually. CoC struggles mightily on offense at times. They also looked bad the other time I saw them against Wisconsin, but they have to be doing something right to be 16-3, right?

Got a first look at Chicago State, the team that is perennially among the worst in Division I but recently rattled off five wins in a row after a 1-14 start. Even though the Cougars lost to Oakland, 77-60, I was impressed. CSU is competing so much better than it has in the past. The attack is structured, the team doesn’t lose its cool when it gets down 10 points or more, and there is some talent. Tony Weeden and 7-1 Jaleel Akindele are nice talents. Oh, and how is Oakland only 9-13? More talent there than that. Would also like to see Rawle Marshall be even more assertive in the offense-the Mid-Continent has a lot of excellent players, and he may be the best of all.

Also, big win by Vanderbilt over Kentucky. Nice job by the Commodores of taking over late-usually that has been the Wildcats’ time this year, but Vandy turned the tables by winning the game at the end. Wonderful Memorial Gym certainly didn’t hurt, and now the Commodores have to start beating some people on the road.

-By the way, congrats to John Chaney on his 700th win. The Wise Owl is easily one of my favorite coaches and a true legend. And despite their inconsistency this year, don’t count Temple out of the postseason just yet. The Owls could easily make a run late and/or in the Atlantic 10 tourney.

-The Xavier-Cincinnati game is still as good a way to spend two hours on a weeknight as anything around. Between national importance and the intensity and downright hatred between the two teams, this is the best rivalry in college basketball right now, Duke-UNC included. Also, that’s six of eight now for the Musketeers in this series, for those scoring at home.

-The NCAA Tournament Selection Committee is going to have to make some tough philosophical decisions this year, but I’m guessing we can figure on the end result being a tourney that looks pretty much like it usually does. That means that the Big 10 and, to a lesser extent, Pac-10 will get their quota of teams in the tourney. Likely, the issue is going to be whether to invite teams with 23-25 wins without many marquee scalps, or teams with average resumes but good conference records in major conferences.

The head of the committee, Bob Bowlsby, is the athletic director of a Big 10 school (Iowa). Frankly, the Big 10 stinks this year, and I don’t care what Indiana or Michigan State’s conference records are right now, they mean about as much to me as Vermont’s 9-0 record in the America East means to them. The league is so plain this year that conference record shouldn’t mean a thing. But at the same time, schools like Southern Illinois, Kent State and Utah State haven’t done all that much to impress, either, at least in that “quality win” department. They’ll have to rely on sheer numbers of wins to make their case.

If there is a point they have that probably deserves to have heard, it’s the fact that leagues like the Big 10 have been working even harder in recent years to avoid playing teams like SIU and Utah State, making it ridiculously tough for them to even get chances for eye-opening wins. It’s not as if they’ve been bungling all their chances; they simply haven’t been there. As a result, there really is no fair way to even come close to determining how the two sides stack up against each other, but the committee has proven over the years that it cares nothing about this. Result: with it being an almost all things equal situation, you can be the Big 10 will be the league getting the benefit of the doubt, no matter how many more chances its teams botched during the season.

-I’m not a huge ACC guy, especially after the way it raided the Big East. I’m also certainly not a fan of any conferences receiving ridiculous amounts of NCAA bids. As of right now, though, I won’t have much objection if the league gets seven NCAA bids. That’s based mostly on the conference’s strength, but also somewhat on how weak the Big 10 and Pac-10 are. (Of course, check back with me if the ACC gets seven and the Big 10 still gets five…)

Duke is a no-brainer. Wake Forest and Georgia Tech overachieved early and are starting to slide in conference play, but still have enough to be fine. North Carolina is an enigma but will be there, too. Florida State has proven itself with its home wins recently, while N.C. State should be in ahead of Maryland, and the Terps aren’t going to get sent to the NIT unless they collapse totally. Put it this way: the ACC deserves 7 bids a heck of a lot more than the SEC does.

-What an odd Super Bowl. Large portions of the game had absolutely nothing for excitement, but when the offenses clicked they did it with a flurry. Fun stuff when it was going on. Oh, and the commercials absolutely stunk. Between the ugly state of sports logo design (which comes from the “branding” fad that has led to copycat logos, uniforms and identities throughout sports) and the ads on Sunday, it sure looks like marketing in this country is in sad shape right now.

Also was glad to see Ed Hochuli got the assignment as referee for the game. He and Johnny Grier are by far my favorite NFL referees, although I think the officiating in the NFL is pretty good in comparison to many other leagues. (I think I’m also in the minority on that.) I love Ed’s detailed proses explaining calls, although unfortunately for my entertainment he didn’t have to rely on that skill much in the Super Bowl.

-Oh no, LeBron James didn’t make the NBA All-Star Game. What is ESPN’s hype machine going to do?

-Same with this whole Bob Knight situation. Whatever really happened and whoever is really to blame, something tells me it wasn’t as big a deal as ESPN decided to make it out to be. Certainly given his past, the coach needed to and needs to tread softly around any type of disagreement he is involved in, and especially in public. If he was needled by the chancellor, though, as some are saying, is it a surprise? More importantly, if this had been anyone else, would ESPN or anyone else have even cared? Enough of the tabloid journalism.

-What was said last week about Austin Peay deserving a break from the ‘disappointment’ tag they received here earlier, you can also apply that to Vermont and East Tennessee State. The Catamounts have won 10 in a row and, like Austin Peay, are winning the close games and winning on the road. UVM has played 12 of 18 on the road and played 7 of 9 non-conference games away from Patrick Gym, which may be a good reason for their early struggles. Meanwhile, ETSU has been taking care of business in the Southern Conference and with Georgia Southern and College of Charleston is part of a terrific three-way battle for the conference. Those three are a combined 51-10, but, unfortunately, none has any wins out of conference that will impress the NCAA committee much. For their part, the Bucs lost at Texas Tech and Clemson (in overtime) but also dropped two in the Rainbow Classic, where they could’ve had a chance for a good win over Hawaii if they’d gotten to the finals. Still, as they proved last year in the NCAAs against Wake Forest, this won’t be a team anyone will want to play if they make the field.

-Just when we thought that silly black road uniform fad had started to run its course, we get Baylor and New Mexico wearing them the past few days. Come one, guys, you’re style sense suggests you’re the equivalent of those who still want to think grunge is cool. And these are two schools who have good color combinations to begin with-I’ve always liked the cherry and silver of New Mexico as well as Baylor’s green and gold. On the other hand, I loved Villanova’s uniforms against St. Joseph’s Monday night.

-I’m not really partial to any particular school in the Northeast Conference, but I’d really like to see St. Francis of New York keep up its strong play. The Terriers are 9-2 and atop this wide-open league now, and crushed St. Francis of Pennsylvania, 84-54, on Saturday. Coach Ron Ganulin seems like one of the good guys, and I watched their terribly heartbreaking loss in the NEC tourney final against Monmouth a few years ago when they had a 20-point lead midway through the second half and blew it. Haven’t seen many more painful meltdowns over the years but this fun up-tempo team from the small Brooklyn school with the puny gym (the Pope Physical Education Center, which seats about 1,000) deserves to get into the NCAAs one of these years.

-And who is that at the top of the Mid Continent standings again? Why, uh, oh yes, Valparaiso, 7-3 in the league and one of six teams with three or four losses in the league. Also close are IUPUI, Oral Roberts, Centenary, Missouri-Kansas City and Chicago State.

St. Francis (NY) also gets bonus points for being another of the schools that lets students into games for free. I’m guessing many smaller colleges around the country do this, and will continue to keep an eye out for them.

Also got a nice note from Tom, who asked about my thoughts on the Colonial Athletic Association. The standings pretty well sum up my view; this league is more wide open than the throttle on a stock car at Daytona. Before the season, I thought UNC-Wilmington would take the league again, and after a month, I figured it was George Mason’s to lose. At the top now, though, are Virginia Commonwealth, Drexel and Old Dominion, with Delaware, GMU, UNCW right behind and Hofstra, Towson and William & Mary all proving capable of pulling upsets. Whoever gets to the NCAA Tournament from the CAA isn’t going to be much regarded, but the toughness and parity of the conference is going to mean the league champion has been well tested. If I had to pick a favorite right now, I’d go with Mason or Drexel, with UNCW and Delaware as darkhorses. But that is just a true stab in the dark, and certainly isn’t meant as a slight to VCU, ODU or any others.

Surprisingly average schedule for so late in the season. Still a lot of conferences sorting themselves out at the top, the Big South, Big Sky, CAA, Mid-Con, Northeast and Southland being just a few. And that’s to say nothing about jumbles like the Big 12, Conference USA and the Big 10.

Drexel at Virginia Commonwealth. Top of the CAA is on the line here. Too bad point guard and leading scorer Dominic Jones missed VCU’s game against Georgia Tech. Would’ve liked to see how the Rams had done against the Yellow Jackets with a full deck.

Richmond at Dayton. Flyers have rebounded nicely after hitting an air pocket late in December.

Louisville at Memphis. It flat-out sucks that this game will disappear when Louisville bolts for the Big East. Bring back the Metro Conference.

Central Florida at Belmont. UCF finally lost one to Troy State last week, and now gets the Bruins. These two and Troy State have separated themselves from the pack a bit in the Atlantic Sun, though Georgia State is still dangerous.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Illinois-Chicago. The Flames returned all five starters from a 21-9 team but are just 6-4 in the Horizon League. What’s going on here? Win this one and the Panthers may well go unbeaten in conference, and if they do, they deserve an NCAA bid, whether automatic or at-large.

IUPUI at Oral Roberts. A few weeks ago these two played one of the best games we’ll never see-a 108-105 Jaguar win in two overtimes. Two very nice teams.

Rice at Texas-El Paso. Both of these teams deserve more NCAA at-large consideration than they will receive. As expected, the WAC has beaten itself up in conference.

UAB at Louisville. If the Blazers keep improving down the stretch like they did last year, look out come NCAA time. The Cards are wobbling a bit right now.

Oklahoma State at Iowa State. The Cyclones are becoming a team to watch.

Georgia Tech at Tennessee. Now this is interesting, and will be a good indicator of if or how much the Yellow Jackets have dropped off after their hot start. As an aside, wouldn’t it have been nice if UT had played somebody, anybody out of conference? An occasional good SEC win is fancy, but so many teams in that conference play nobody out of league (see LSU, South Carolina, Mississippi State, etc.) that you wonder how seriously you should take some of those conference wins.

Richmond at Duquesne. This is one of those trap games that the Spiders can’t lose if they’re looking to keep their NCAA at-large candidacy alive.

Wright State at Wisconsin-Milwaukee. If UWM beats UIC and wins this one, the Horizon League title is all but wrapped up.

Southern Illinois at Creighton. Probably one of the most anticipated games of the regular season. It even makes it on ESPN2…what, Penn State and Northwestern not playing today?

UC Santa Barbara at Utah State. This will be a stiff challenge to the Aggies’ win streak. Gauchos are tough enough to win on the road.

Vermont at Northeastern. Huskies aren’t going to let UVM and Boston U. rule the America East without a fight this year.

Manhattan at St. Peter’s. The Peacocks continue to impress this year. What a great turnaround, and don’t be surprised if SPC at least gets into the NIT.

Pittsburgh at Seton Hall. Good to see the Panthers finally hitting some meat in their schedule.

Stephen F. Austin at SE Louisiana. Maybe the two best in the Southland, though Texas State is playing well right now. I like the way SFA plays-constant motion on offense, none of this boring NBA clear-out junk.

Penn at Princeton. Quakers are 0-2 in the Ivy League, but at least one of these two (if not both) is still going to be a factor in who wins the NCAA bid.

Feel free to email Adam with questions he'll answer in the Audibles section: arfboy37@yahoo.com