Adam Glatczak writes the "Wednesday Onions" column for CollegeHoopsnet.  Bookmark the "Wednesday Onions" homepage and come back each week!

-His Coastal Carolina team lost in the Big South tourney semifinals, but Brandon Newby’s performance against Liberty was an embodiment of what March basketball is about. Though he came into the year as one of the Chanticleers’ best players and was averaging more than 14 ppg over their first 18 games, he came down with a knee injury and had been almost completely ineffective in February. He scored 25 points over their final nine games and played just seven minutes and didn’t score a point in CCU’s Big South tourney quarterfinal win over Radford. Needless to say it was something of a shock, then, when the senior came up came up with 28 points in 30 minutes against the Flames. It just wasn’t quite enough for the Chanticleers, who lost 88-73, but the game was a nailbiter until Newby reaggravated his injury with a few minutes left.

Coastal had the very stiff task of having to face Liberty in its own Vines Center, a.k.a. The Furnace. As they showed in the Big South tourney, Liberty is playing pretty darn well right now, better than your average 16 seed. Their fan support was in accordance with this. More than 6,000 were on hand for the semifinal against Coastal and another 8,515 filled it in the finals, when the Flames destroyed High Point, 89-44. With that and some slick freshmen leading them this year, it looks like the Flames are going to be one of the next schools to go on the big boys’ ‘Do Not Schedule’ lists.

-Fun stat from that Coastal Carolina-Liberty game: 53 of the Chanticleers’ 73 points came from the bench.

-We know it isn’t going to happen, but I’m starting my own Dickie V-style Championship Week crusade here anyway: Austin Peay should be in the NCAA Tournament. They were undefeated in the Ohio Valley and finished ahead of an excellent Murray State team, a feat more impressive than many might think. Nobody played a tougher non-conference schedule either. They deserve to be in over some 12- or 13-loss team from the Big 12 or Big East.

-Oh, and in case this point hasn’t been pounded home in this column enough the past few weeks, we’ll say it again: Western Michigan should be in the NCAA Tournament regardless of its MAC tourney performance. Ditto for Nevada and Texas-El Paso of the WAC. I’d also say Air Force, too, but I’m pretty confident the Falcons are in.

-Someday Niagara is going to get even with Manhattan, but the Jaspers are running up quite a tab at their expense. Manhattan’s 62-61 win over the Purple Eagles offered the same result as 1993, when Niagara came into the tourney as the top seed but lost a heartbreaker in the finals to the Jaspers, 68-67. Disappointing for Niagara’s seniors that they never will get to the NCAA Tournament. Trammell Darden and James (Mook) Reaves, in particular, were rocks there for four years, and Darden is an A-1 example of why coaches should pay attention to those self-made videotapes of high schoolers trying to sell themselves. He made it to Niagara from Las Vegas, and one can bet for a second that NU coach Joe Mihalich never regretted offering him a scholarship. Hopefully Niagara and maybe at least one other MAAC school (Fairfield? St. Peter’s?) can make some noise in the NIT.

-Other MAAC notes…Marist, Canisius and Loyola of Maryland were, frankly, not very good teams this year, but it was fun to watch how the Red Foxes, Golden Griffins and Greyhounds never seemed to give up no matter what. All three gave very credible performances in the MAAC tourney 1^st Round, and even though they lost, the results easily could’ve been reversed. All lost by single digits, and Marist and Loyola’s games were even closer than the final score.

-As any college sports fan knows, there are a lot of enthusiastic crowds across the country. I am honestly not sure how many more stoked gatherings I’ve seen on TV than that at the University of Buffalo Monday night. The Bulls beat Northern Illinois, 90-73, in a Mid-American Conference 1^st Round game, and the place was beyond electric. A more-than capacity crowd filled Alumni Arena, and all 8,971 enjoyed every second of it. No one left until the game was over, and fans cheered wildly for every play even with the game in hand the final five minutes. The atmosphere truly would’ve made many of the biggest schools in the country jealous.

Suffice to say the fans of Buffalo are starved for a winner. UB has been awful since it moved to Division I in the 90s. It couldn’t win in that decade in the final remnants of the old East Coast Conference or the transitioning Mid-Continent Conference, and was in over its head when it first joined the MAC. Patience with Reggie Witherspoon has proven to pay off, though, and not only is this a legit MAC team, it’s a threat to win the whole darn tourney. And next year should be even better, because there’s not a senior on the roster this year. With the excitement that has been generated by this team and the way it’s playing right now, no matter when the season ends for the Bulls it’s going to be too soon.

-Two programs that mirror each other a lot went out of the postseason in much the same ways this weekend. Butler got on a run in the Horizon League tourney for awhile, but the Bulldogs were eliminated by Illinois-Chicago in the semifinals. UNC-Wilmington did the same in the Colonial Athletic Association, working from a 1^st Round 7-10 matchup into the semis before getting stopped by George Mason. Both went through a rebuilding process this year, and there are some missing parts at both places right now but a lot of it was just youth. Expect both to be better next year.

-If you didn’t see any of the Missouri Valley tournament, we’ll just sum it up with this: Ben Jacobson of Northern Iowa is one heck of a player. As he’s no doubt been told many a time, he looks like the choir boy, but he’s tough. Just can’t wait to see what team underestimates him in UNI’s first round NCAA game, and the Panthers have an excellent shot at winning a game in the tourney. They’re a veteran club that likely won’t go in just “happy to be there,” and the MVC is a grind that should have them well-prepared for whoever is their opponent.

-Also, nice run by SW Missouri State in the MVC tourney. The Bears played two of their best games of the year against Creighton and Southern Illinois, just couldn’t quite sustain it against UNI. It was only a few games, but hopefully the run will get the yahoos off Barry Hinson’s back for at least a little bit. Hinson had a young team this year and it showed at times. SMS lost some ugly games and didn’t beat many teams better than they were this year, but he certainly doesn’t deserve to be under as much pressure as it seems he is. He didn’t have a great team last year or this year, but he’s working on it (a point guard would’ve made a world of difference this year). He also was a victim of being screwed by the NCAA committee in 2000, when the Bears should’ve received an at-large bid, and if they had he’d at least have an NCAA appearance under his belt. Like Illinois fans with Bill Self earlier this year, Bear fans need to stop pining for the past. SW Missouri State isn’t going to be in the Sweet 16 every year like it was in 1999, and with SIU, Creighton and a number of emerging programs in the MVC, it’s going to be awfully hard to ever dominate that league like Charlie Spoonhour’s teams dominated the Mid-Continent in the late 80s-early 90s. That doesn’t mean there isn’t room for improvement in Springfield, but Hinson deserves more time to prove that he can’t engineer that improvement. It’s not as if he’s run the program into the ground or anything.

-Not conference tournament related, but I can almost smell a Southern Illinois-St. Joseph’s NCAA second round matchup. It would be a blast. There may not be two better teams in the country at defending the perimeter.

-The CAA was a jumble all season, but VCU clearly established itself as the best team in the end, or at least as clearly as a team can when it wins the league tourney final by one over George Mason. Virginia Commonwealth actually controlled most of the game, but Mason did a mighty fine job coming back in the closing minutes and just about stole the NCAA bid from the Rams. Looking forward to seeing how the Rams do in the NCAAs, they don’t look like a team that’s particularly dangerous, but that doesn’t always mean a lot. Some of the best upsets (Weber State over North Carolina in 1999, for example) come from teams that don’t pass the on-paper test. It will also be interesting to see if GMU, Drexel or any other CAA team can get into the NIT. Also, very nice job by the Ram, Patriot and CAA fans and Richmond folks in general in putting some fannies in the seats of the Richmond Coliseum for the CAA final. Over 9,000 saw the championship game.

-One could also say the same about the Mid-Continent, wacky league all year but in the end it turned out about as expected at the beginning with Valparaiso and IUPUI fighting for the title. Great job of battling by the Crusaders-the Jaguars controlled almost the entire game Tuesday night, but Valparaiso won the final minutes and, unlike George Mason, completed the comeback. Valpo is probably a team that truthfully doesn’t have much of a shot in the NCAAs, even under the best circumstances, but so what? Certainly not going to diminish anything the Crusaders did this year. And wow, 10 straight years in the conference tournament final for VU…as incredible as Duke’s run has been the past 10-15 years, on its own level Valpo can almost match the Blue Devils.

-Another factoid that’s hard to believe: number 1 or 2 seeds have won every Sun Belt Conference tournament since 1987. Last team to win it from lower than a 2 seed? Alabama-Birmingham, which was a 3 seed in 1987, back when the Sun Belt was a major conference (it’s true).

-Louisiana-Lafayette is likely to be a 14 seed in the NCAA Tournament, maybe a 13. They’ll also be very, very dangerous from that spot. Ditto for Illinois-Chicago. The drawback is both will likely get screwed over badly by the pod system and will be playing pseudo-road games in the tournament. Which is wrong, as we will no doubt be embellishing on again next week once the selections are out.

-New Orleans made a nice (and eventful) run to the Sun Belt final, and maybe the Privateers are a team to watch in the future in a league that is desperately searching for some signature teams right now. UNO defeated North Texas in double overtime in the quarterfinals, then stopped a hot Arkansas-Little Rock team in the semis. At one point, New Orleans went to OT in seven of 12 games before the semifinal against UALR. It also rallied to finish 17-14 and featured a freshman in Bo McCalebb who should light up the league the next few years, if he doesn’t pull a Patrick Sparks and try to transfer to a bigger school.

-Give Illinois-Chicago all the credit in the world for winning the Horizon League tourney in Milwaukee against Wisconsin-Milwaukee. That’s a tough road win, even if the UIC students did a heck of a job of making the Panthers’ homecourt advantage less obvious. If Martell Bailey and Cedrick Banks graduate in the spring and are back next year, this squad could be challenging for a top 25 spot. We thought that might happen this year, but it took the Flames some time to find their stride this year. They are starting to develop that veteran swagger, though, and at the right time of the season.

-Must say I’m not a fan of these goofy double-bye tournaments. Just takes away from the tournament experience when some teams have to win four games to take the title and others only need to win two. I’m a fan of the tourneys where they last three days, four at the max, and you can just park your butt for 8-9 hours and just watch hoops all day the first day. Besides, isn’t one of the points of a tournament to give everyone a relatively equal chance to win it?

A lot of people advocating these new formats say you need to reward the regular season champion. They are rewarded. They receive the top seed and get to play one of the worst teams in the first round and get to play what should be one of the worst teams left in the semifinals. How much more of a reward do they need? If they can’t handle that, they probably aren’t playing well enough to represent the league well in the NCAAs, anyway. The only ones with a real beef are teams like Austin Peay that completely dominate a league in regular season play before losing in the tourney, and that’s where the selection committee should be stepping in and rewarding those teams with at-large berths.

Oh, and all these “upsets” that supposedly make the conference tourneys such farces or so unfair to regular season champions? Truth is, upsets happen sometimes but they aren’t as rampant as some like to believe. As of today, a 1 or 2 seed has won every single tourney completed.

-And besides all of that above, sometimes all the advantages in the world don’t help anyways. Boston University ripped through the America East this year and had won 23 of 24 going into the A-East tourney. The top-seeded Terriers faced #8 Stony Brook in a quarterfinal game played on their homecourt (technically, Brown Arena is BU’s ‘second’ home court, but it’s still on their campus and was a home game). BU lost, 62-58, in what will probably go down as the biggest upset of this year’s conference tournament season.

-Stony Brook ran out of gas in the second half of its A-East semifinal game against Maine, and it’s time to give the Black Bears some credit. Maine has flown just under the radar all season, not quite enjoying the dominant success in conference as Boston U. or Vermont and not having quite the flash appeal of Northeastern, which beat West Virginia and features standout guard Jose-Juan Barea. Quietly, though, the Black Bears have rung up 20 wins this year, and they’re just a step away from their first NCAA berth. Maine has some nice inside and outside pieces with guards Eric Dobson and Kevin Reed and inside big guy Mark Flavin. Dobson and Reed make up one of the more underrated backcourts in the country, and this is a team that played well at Florida State in the season opener. It seemed like a surprise at the time, but given how well FSU has played and how Maine has played, it turns out it wasn’t a bad indicator at all. It’s unlikely, but it would be really nice to see the Black Bears at least get an NIT bid if they don’t win the championship game Saturday.

-And what was all that about Vermont being finished when Taylor Coppenrath broke his wrist? UVM got by New Hampshire and Hartford in the A-East tourney, and with BU going out early, sure enough, the Catamounts will be hosting the conference final at Patrick Gym. With top seed Boston U. and 3 seed Northeastern both losing in the quarterfinals, the America East tourney has been as wild as any, but the cool Cats’ have been the pillars in the storm so far.

-This year has hardly been normal in the Big Sky, with six teams tying for second in the eight-team league. Since the conference only invites six teams to its postseason tourney, maybe it should’ve left out first- and eighth-place and just invited all the second-place teams, but it didn’t and as it turns out, the teams in the final tonight are Eastern Washington and Northern Arizona, probably the Big Sky’s two most stable programs in recent years along with Weber State. The Eagles are trying for a long-awaited first NCAA bid. A 16 seed in the west almost certainly awaits the winner, but you could bet your house Eastern would consider it more than worthwhile.

-We’re convinced-St. Mary’s was not going to beat Gonzaga this year. The Gaels were good enough to hang with the Bulldogs, but not good enough to get in front of them. Terrible job of boxing out Ronny Turiaf Monday night, and SMC commits just enough turnovers to hamper its offensive efficiency. Gaels were maybe one more guard and another frontcourt player or two from being very, very good this year, though, and hopefully will get into the NIT, where they certainly could go on a run.

It also says something about how good Gonzaga is in relation to the rest of the country, too. St. Mary’s was able to go to Arizona and had a seven-point lead with less than three minutes to play, but couldn’t so even get a lead in the second half against the Zags in three tries. Arizona this year isn’t Arizona of the past, but you’ll still find people who think the Wildcats are better than GU.

-Was ready to say Washington deserved to be in the NCAA Tournament if it could beat Stanford, but after watching the Cardinal against Washington State, I’m not so sure. Stanford needed a near-miracle to beat Wazzu, so it wasn’t much of a surprise at all that the Huskies disposed of them easily. Look at Washington’s tournament resume, and they still don’t have many great wins this year. As Andy Katz of ESPN has smartly pointed out, take out the Stanford win and just look at the numbers, and Washington isn’t really any different from Pacific, Drexel, or a lot of other second- or third-place teams around the country. The Pac-10 is so bad that neither their second-place conference standing nor their late streak of wins means much more than such a streak in, say, the Horizon League. Two wins over Arizona really isn’t any more impressive than two wins over  All that said, it still wouldn’t be a surprise if the Huskies win the Pac-10 tourney.

-Expect ‘surprise’ winners in several of the major conference tournaments this weekend. Surprise in name only, because these tourneys regularly feature some teams that completely dog it. Best candidates are the Big 10 and Pac-10, because the high seeds in both tourneys traditionally take preseason games against Marathon Oil more seriously than the conference tournament. Mountain West is also a candidate, and watch Boise State and Hawaii in the WAC tourney.

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