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

Onions

-Saturday was a minidish owner’s delight, with a boatload of exciting, close games, as well as several near-miss attempts at upsets. In the late afternoon and early evening in a three-hour blocks, one could’ve watched Cleveland State scare the bejesus out of North Carolina (the Vikings let that one get away-gotta hit the front ends on those 1-and-1s), saw Xavier and Indiana play into overtime, or maybe watched Georgia and Gonzaga also go an extra five minutes. You then could’ve caught most of the game where Oakland nearly beat Missouri, then saw Vermont and UCLA stage a back-and-forth game in which Catamount forward Taylor Coppenrath single-handedly kept his team in the game with 38 points. Or else, you could watch Centenary surprisingly stick with Texas for a half, while a pesky Hofstra team also stayed within striking distance of Maryland the whole way. Earlier in the day, UC Riverside almost beat Arizona State and Louisville and Iowa went into overtime. Made it easy for most of us to get away from the BCS garbage for a day and just enjoy a hoops schedule that turned out a lot better than it looked.

-I’m a believer in Georgia Tech. For now. Remember, it was another ACC school that looked like world-beaters in last year’s preseason NIT, and we know how that team finished out the year. If a team on a hot start doesn’t cool before January, the familiarity and rigors of conference play can also quickly take very good teams and make them mediocre. You can’t help but like what GT is doing right now, though. Tech is exciting and looks like it could certainly be a force nationally (as if it already hasn’t been). Paul Hewitt has his running game at top speed right now, and it’s a blast to watch. At the same time, though, when a team comes out of almost nowhere like this, you do have to wonder just how long the ride is going to be.

-If one has forgotten over the course of an offseason, it only takes about two minutes of watching Butler play to recall just how much fun it is to watch the Bulldogs, especially against teams that are bigger and/or more athletic. We will NOT say more talented, because BU is every bit as talented at doing what it does as a team of high school All-Americans might be at their play. Butler lost to Michigan, 61-60, in overtime Sunday night, but it was a privilege to watch how this new Bulldog team (missing four starters from last year’s Sweet 16 squad) drove the Go Blue nuts in the second half with cuts down the lane and NBA three-pointers. The Dogs had plenty of chances to win the game, so the loss has to be a minor disappointment but shouldn’t be too much so. Butler is still growing, and the Wolverines are also a very good team; in fact, they could be something of a darkhorse Big 10 favorite.

-I will admit, I get sick of seeing them on TV all the time, and I was kind of distracted by other things that evening, but from what I saw of the Florida-Arizona game, that was a dandy.

-Seeing that Coors Light commercial saluting the “Wingman” makes me laugh. Maybe it’s because it hits too close to home. Some of us have played the wingman just way too often.

-How about Portland? Of all teams, the Pilots are making some of the louder noise on the left coast early in the non-conference season. First, UP won at Oregon State in a double-overtime dandy last week. Then, Portland went down to New Mexico Monday night and fought back to beat the Lobos, 77-71. Granted, neither opponent is likely to finish in the top half of their conference, but those are still two very impressive road wins. The West Coast Conference already has its share of scalps this year, as almost every team has beaten a pretty darn good opponent so far. Teams and there wins include: San Francisco (Ohio State), Pepperdine (Colorado), San Diego (SMU), St. Mary’s (UC Santa Barbara),

Santa Clara (Fresno State) and of course Gonzaga (Georgia). Even Loyola Marymount is off to a 4-0 start. The league’s overall record before Tuesday night was “only” 21-16, so the consistency is somewhat vacant yet, but the potential is certainly there for the WCC. Portland and LMU’s strong non-conference play especially shows that this league will not be nearly as easy for Gonzaga to gallop through this year as some have thought. The Pilots and Loyola Marymount have been the bottom of the WCC for some years, but both are improving and the rest of the league isn’t exactly falling apart.

-Gosh, it seems like it’s been about three weeks already, but it was only last Wednesday that Dayton beat Hawaii in an entertaining Maui Classic final. The Flyers look for real right now, and wow, would a St. Joseph’s-Dayton matchup be something to see, even in December. All that stuff said about Texas Tech looking simply more prepared than its opponents early in the season? Forget it (the Red Raiders have lost two in a row) and apply it to Dayton. Seriously, this is a team that is making hay with its experience. It seems like Keith Waleskowski, Sean Finn and Ramod Marshall have been playing at UD since Don Donoher was the coach. And give new coach Brian Gregory credit, too. Similar to how Stan Heath followed Gary Waters at Kent State, Gregory looks to be following an excellent coach and applying his own stamp while taking his new program to even higher heights.

Also, Hawaii also deserves some recognition for how its team came together in Maui. After the Rainbow Warriors lost in their opener to UC Santa Barbara, they came into this tourney looking shaky (witness that 12-0 deficit to Santa Clara in the opening minutes of their first game). However, Riley Wallace’s team showed noticeable improvement through its three games, and wasn’t far from knocking off a very good Dayton team for the title. The Rainbows have a team that blends together nicely, with some role players, shooters and good inside players. Julian Sensley will be a player to watch as he gets more comfortable with the system, and Haim Shiminovich is a favorite. He’s a big plodder, but he makes things happen inside and is a player I’d want on my team.

-Division II watch: Alaska-Anchorage went 2-1 in the Great Alaska Shootout last week, beating Texas State-San Marcos (or is it Texas State? SW Texas State?) and Canisius. The Seawolves, who had that nickname before anyone else thought it was cool, also lost to Seton Hall by just five, staging a furious rally from 20 down in the second half and having chances to tie late. After seeing Lubbock Christian, Alaska-Fairbanks and Alaska-Anchorage win multiple games against D-I foes in the past weeks, the moral of the story should be that non-Division I basketball is not nearly as bad as some make it out to be. A lot of the better schools in D-II and NAIA can certainly play with D-I schools. Division III is a little trickier because there are no scholarships, but otherwise, don’t lose your wits if your team loses to one of these guys. Yes, it isn’t a good loss, but anyone who thinks these losses are automatically the “worst in school history” (as some Bradley fans were saying about the Braves loss to Lubbock Christian) is really missing the boat. Forget the division classification; these aren’t bad teams. Lubbock Christian beat Rhode Island, so there’s not nearly as much shame in Bradley losing to them as if LCU had been pummeled by the Rams. And trust me, no matter how many conspiracy theories one comes up with regarding the NCAA selection committee, they are forced to recognize that and if you are good enough the rest of the season, you can get a mulligan (see: Southern Illinois last year after its embarrassing performance in the MVC title game against Creighton). Since Bradley followed that game with a win over Miami (Fla.), I would say that offsets the LCU loss.

-Light bulb: the NCAA regulates the amount of time and number of days teams can practice during a week, right? Maybe its next step should be to limit how much time players can spend in the weight room during a week. How about we force schools to set aside five hours a week from the weight room and make them use that time to shoot free throws? I know it’s said often to the point where those who say it are supposedly fuddy-duds, but I’m sorry, there is no excuse whatsoever for so many teams to be shooting around 50% or worse on free throws in games. Don’t give me this “it’s all mental” thing-not every player is Shaquille O’Neal, and if that is the reason for most, then obviously players need a hell of a lot more mental toughness than they have now. Even the excuse about players not wanting to practice them doesn’t work, not when you consider just how easy the shot is. When it’s this widespread and this bad, there are zero good excuses. These teams are just some random examples, but if I’m a coach with a team that shoots as bad as Bucknell (1-for-17 vs. Mich. State), Connecticut (10-for-30 vs. Ga. Tech) or Rice (13-for-25 vs. Stanford) did, there are practices where we’re not doing anything but shooting free throws, and if players screw around while practicing them, they’re running til they can’t no more. And then they’re shooting more. Having good free throw shooting is nothing more than paying attention to detail, no different than trying to make players better help-side defenders. In that regard, coaches deserve some blame. We know players want to run and dunk and shoot threes, not frees, so it’s mostly their fault. However, coaches can also send the message that foul shots are important through playing time, who they recruit, etc. So far, many don’t seem to do that, so when teams are literally losing games at the line, you have to wonder if some are emphasizing success at the foul stripe as much as they should be.

-Now that the ACC has won the “challenge” with the Big 10 the past, what, five years, can we finally get rid of this thing? Some of the matchups are excellent, but as a whole this event just does not excite me at all. It’s not like TV is needed to bring these conferences together to play each other anyways, and for every Illinois-North Carolina, there’s always a Florida State-Northwestern. If you want to match up Duke and Michigan State, fine, just don’t make us have to bear with some of these other manufactured games. You know darn well a Purdue-Butler game, if promoted at all, would be at least as big a deal on TV as a Purdue-Clemson game.

-Wow, has LaSalle been a disappointment. The Explorers were rattling off the losses early in the season and started 0-4 before beating James Madison Wednesday night. Among the losses were Appalachian State, Hampton, and a 20-point beating by Lafayette. All are respectable teams, but an Atlantic 10 team supposedly on the rise should win them. If they had some good excuses like injuries or something, it might be understandable, but LaSalle is just not playing well right now. The Explorers better turn it around by the end of non-conference play, or it could be a long season in the A-12.

Mississippi is another team struggling. The Rebels lost to Arkansas State and Florida State already and had a ton of trouble with SE Louisiana and Centenary. The schedule lightens up even more after a Dec. 17 visit to Evansville, so Ole Miss isn’t going to hurt the SEC too much, but this is not a very good team.

Audibles

O.K., I spent plenty of last year hammering on college basketball officiating, and out of respect to the many officials and referees that do a good job calling games at any level, I will generally bite my tongue this year. I am going to say, though, that  I’m already sick of seeing the home cooking in these non-conference games.

Check out these foul differentials: Centenary 21, Texas 8; Ark.-Pine Bluff 30, Oklahoma 14; Detroit 28, Duke 13; Lehigh 22, Connecticut 14; Hofstra 37, Maryland 13. And this is a pretty random sample; I didn’t have to dig long to find these numbers. I know that undersized teams sometimes will foul more trying to offset size differences. That much is obvious and makes sense. I also don’t think officials come into a game looking to job teams. But some of those numbers speak for themselves. If you think one of those brawny Rick Barnes-coached Texas teams could EVER get through a game with less than 10 fouls, you’re dreaming better dreams than I ever could hope to.

I wasn’t the only one seething last weekend. On Vermont’s final possession against UCLA, a Catamount player was hip-checked on his attempt to get up court and then was hacked when he threw up a desperation three. UVM coach Tom Brennan was incensed at the second missed violation; I was bothered more by the first, which clearly slowed the offensive player’s progress and cost the visitors time. The second was questionable and the shot had little chance to go in anyway. Brennan went off the court in a fury and without shaking any hands, and didn’t take questions after the game. The normally affable coach was mad, Bob Knight-in-the-80s-mad, and it wasn’t the classiest reaction but, frankly, I didn’t blame him. Whether it was home cooking or this asinine idea some have that nothing should be called at the end of a game, there were at least 1 ½ awful no-calls there.

If there were an honorable mention home cooking no-call of the week, it would be from the Centenary-Texas game. On one play in the middle of the second half, Centenary guard Andrew Wisniewski drove into the lane and was mugged by at least two defenders, causing the ball to go out of bounds. No foul and Texas ball, despite the fact that from one UT player Wisniewski took an incidental-but-still blatant open-handed smash to the face that knocked the ball away, left him with a bloody nose and maybe some loose teeth, and kept him out of the rest of the game. It shouldn’t have happened-basketball players should not be getting injured in any contact collision that isn’t a block-charge scenario (that includes diving for the ball when someone is on the floor in possession of it) but that was the flow established in this game. Centenary did do a good job adjusting to it, as they needed to, but apparently they missed the memo that helmets with full cage masks were required in this one. Too bad-the Gents hung with Texas for a half before getting mauled in the second half, and to have your best player get injured in that way is a double kick in the groin.

Games you can’t or won’t watch but should

Chief on anyone’s list of games to watch this week should be a football game. The latest edition of the Army-Navy game is Saturday, and if you’re not watching the greatest rivalry in college football by a landslide, you better have a decent excuse. Who cares what the records are, there is more spirit and healthier competition in this game than any in college football. Even if you have no military background whatsoever, and it’s still hard to find any better scenes in football than there is at this game.

Oh, and all you people complaining that there should be a college playoff? Why not spend that time complaining about something that actually could be changed in this lifetime. There is no reason college football teams should go to bowl games with 6-6 records, and there is no reason conferences should be allowed to sew up eight bowl bids for themselves before a game has been played in a season. Leagues should be limited to two guaranteed bids at the most, period. It’s nothing less than a crime that a 10-2 Northern Illinois team isn’t going to a bowl, yet 6-6 Northwestern, UCLA and Kansas are just because their leagues set up contracts to get 6, 7 or 8 teams in guaranteed spots and the NCAA has this ridiculous allowance for .500 teams to make it. Contrary to what many think, college football was indeed better in the days of the back-room deals, before the BCS was ever a figment of the imagination.

Wednesday

Gonzaga at Washington. Ok, the Zags may not be a top five team (as some thought in the preseason) but how is it they keep dropping in the polls, even when they win?

Utah State at Utah. With the consistent excellence of these two programs, this is one of the best rivalries in the country right now.

Pepperdine at UC Santa Barbara. When you consider they don’t play guarantee games and don’t have the BCS conference name brand to pump up their slate, does any school schedule more ambitiously than the Waves?

Butler at Ball State. Believe it or not, these two could be the best teams in Indiana. We won’t know for sure, since Notre Dame and Purdue won’t schedule either one.

Murray State at TCU. The Racers have been impressive early on. Ask Southern Mississippi. The Golden Eagles must’ve felt like St. Leo’s against a John Thompson-Georgetown team when they lost 94-54 to Murray on Saturday.

New Mexico at New Mexico State. Like Utah State-Utah, another rivalry few see, but second-to-none in its intensity.

Thursday

Nevada at Portland. Who ever would’ve thought this game could become a quality win for either team?

Western Kentucky vs. Louisville. Technically, this is a home game for the Hilltoppers. Yeah, right. It was in the original contract between the two schools; now, it’s played on what is certainly a neutral court in Nashville.

Friday

Northern Illinois vs. Illinois-Chicago, Eastern Washington at Iowa. The Amana Hawkeye Classic (or whatever it’s called now) is a good one. Give Iowa credit for usually bringing in a respectable field in this tourney. The Hawkeyes will have to earn this championship, though one likes their chances at home.

Saturday

Detroit at Wisconsin. Not sure if the Titans can handle the Badgers’ size, but you know they won’t back down.

St. Joseph’s at Penn, Temple vs. Drexel, LaSalle vs. Villanova. The Big Five Classic is as good as it gets. Tripleheader…Palestra…Philly hoops. What more could you want?

Providence at Rhode Island. Hey, hey, this will be a heated one. The Friars are becoming one of everyone’s favorite ‘sleeper’ teams, but the Rams will be tough at home.

UNC Charlotte at Old Dominion. Yes, the 49ers were impressive in beating Syracuse, but don’t be surprised if they lose on the road to their old Sun Belt Conference rivals. And how long has Demon Brown been at UNCC? He may not have been on the 49ers’ 1977 Final Four team, but I’m pretty sure he was playing in the backcourt with Byron Dinkins in the late 80s.

UNLV at Loyola Marymount. Several times in recent years, the Lions have played the Rebels close and even lead much of the game but lost at the end.

California at Colorado. Buffs need this one or they could risk not doing much for quality wins outside the Big 12.

Austin Peay at Alabama. We’ll give the Governors one more spin. A bad loss here, and we’re starting to think maybe Murray State is the best in the OVC right now.

Alabama-Birmingham at Mississippi State. Not completely sure about the Bulldogs yet, but these may be two underrated teams. Especially the Blazers-look for UAB to seriously challenge for the NCAAs this year.

Illinois-Chicago or Northern Illinois at Iowa. The Flames or Huskies could certainly upend the Hawkeyes, and nobody’s guaranteeing Iowa beat Eastern Washington, either.

Sunday

Bradley at DePaul. Only 11 games today, and five are good ones. Basketball in Illinois looks pretty swell this year, and both of these teams should be in the NCAAs or NIT.

Holy Cross at Louisville. Crusaders are struggling early, but Cards didn’t look great against Iowa, either.

Wisconsin-Milwaukee at N.C. State. Not just being a homer when I say this, I really like the way UWM plays. Bruce Pearl is one of the underrated coaches in the country, but not for long.

Murray State at Western Kentucky. Bluegrass State battle should be fun, and the Hilltoppers are ripe for the picking.

George Mason at North Carolina. The Patriots don’t back down to ACC teams, so expect GMU to hang in this one longer than some might expect.

Monday

Stephen F. Austin at TCU.  Contrast Sunday with Monday’s less-than inspiring itinerary. SFA did blow out Baylor already.

Tuesday

Boston College at St. Joseph’s. The Eagles have been quite a surprise so far, and Al Skinner is kind of like the Cliff Ellis of the Big East-always underappreciated, but his teams surprise every couple of years.

Xavier at Miami (Ohio). Isn’t it interesting how over the past 15 years XU has gone from being an underdog to being the hunted? This would be a pretty big win for Miami.

Iowa at Northern Iowa. Like Ohio State did against San Francisco, don’t be surprised if another mid-pack Big 11 team loses on the road against a mid-pack non-BCS conference school.

Cal State-Fullerton at USC. The Titans did beat Pepperdine this week, and the Trojans struggled with Northridge, so this could be tighter than the Trojans would like. One thing is guaranteed, though: the USC Song Girls will look good.

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