The Week In Chaos, February 19: Aggies Commit Voter Fraud, Hoyas Channel Tim Donaghy, Duke Appeases Nation

The Week In Chaos examines all of the absurd things that happened to Top 25 (AP Poll only, coaches don't know anything) teams in the previous week of college hoops. With this season being The Year Of Mediocrity, consider this a chronicling of all this misdeeds these supposedly high-caliber teams are guilty of. If this season is to be forgotten due to a lack of greatness, I feel it should be remembered for its abundance of greatlessness. See, I'm being positive!

This is part 1 of this week's edition with part 2 coming tomorrow. Why am I dividing one post into two parts? Because reading.writing about this much mediocrity in one sitting can significantly lower our national level of productivity. That and I want to make it look like I post more.

AP Top 25 teams going undefeated- 14. Memphis, UCLA, Tennessee, North Carolina, Butler, Texas, Xavier, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Purdue, Washington State, Louisville, Vanderbilt, St. Mary's.
AP Top 25 teams going winless- 2. Michigan State, Texas A & M.

Most Ridiculous Display of Mediocrity- Because Texas A & M is such a bad team, I should probably exclude it from The Week In Chaos on the grounds that the steaming pile of mediocrity they exhibit every week makes it too difficult for other teams to be included. But that would mean I don't get to make fun of how incredibly fraudulent A & M is. And losing to Oklahoma State at home is something very much worth ridiculing. You know, the Oklahoma State that had lost seven of nine going in and hadn't won a road game in TWO FREAKING YEARS. The Oklahoma State that was crushed by North Texas, Oral Roberts and Illinois this year. The Aggies, in some sick, sadistic cruelty to the consciousness of casual basketball fans everywhere who are being duped into thinking this team can win a tournament game (or, gasp, maybe two), are still ranked in No. 22 in both polls this week, (hopefully, getting annihilated by Texas last night will change that). They better pimp that win in the first game meeting with the Longhorns if they want any type of favorable seeding because A & M's best road win is against an eight-man Missouri team and its best win otherwise is against Ohio State way back in 2007. As a result of this fraudulence, the Aggies RPI (38) is nearly twice its national ranking (22), which should be enough to classify the Associated Press and Coaches' Association as terror organizations.

Most Narrow Avoidance of Mediocrity That Should Not Be Forgotten But Will Be- Lots of competition for this last week with Memphis escaping Baghdad UAB, UConn beating South Florida at the buzzer and Xavier squeaking by Charlotte, but, for all intents and purposes, Georgetown is VERY lucky to not have a home L to Villanova on its resume. Let's take another look at that absolutely awful foul call 70 feet from the basketball with under a second left that got the Hoyas the win, complete with play-by-play from clinically insane announcer Rich Chvotkin, who I'm going to assume is loosely affiliated with Georgetown University.

It's almost as if he was excited for the Hoyas win or something. Anyway, the Big East is inexplicably defending the call, which officially ended Villanova's season and kept Georgetown in line for a completely fraudulent two or three seed (let's not forget the officials handed them a game at West Virginia and they received some favorable calls late in the first Syracuse meeting), even with the loss to the Orange Saturday. By my count, G'Town has two quality wins, home against Notre Dame and Connecticut, one of which it won on a three-pointer by a 7-2 center. The Hoyas are ranked No. 64 in KenPom's luck rating, which says they are 1.1 wins better than their record, but I am counting 2.3*.
* made-up number

Most Embarrassing Realizations of Mediocrity- I was too busy watching Dwight Howard and LeBron James' continuing campaign to make normal (well as normal as someone with a blog can be) 22 and 23 year olds feel awful about their lives, but apparently Duke lost Sunday. To Wake Forest. By 13. Yes, that Wake Forest, the one making an intriguing at-large campaign but still losers to Charlotte (by 22), Georgia Tech (at home) and to Boston College (by 39 freaking points). Dino Gaudio and his freshman-led squad (top two scorers are froshes) might be a great story and Gaudio may be ACC Coach of the Year, but that still doesn't mean Duke, which had a legit stake at No. 1 before this game, should lose. To Wake Forest. By 13. The Blue Devils, who had won their previous 12 games by an average of 14.3 points per game and had a good shot at entering the ACC tourney with one loss, had every starter foul out Sunday (yes, even Zoubek had to step on the floor). Wake shot 38 free throws, giving irrational Duke fans a piece of evidence in the Duke Gets All the Calls debate that they will inevitably use for all of eternity. The Devils also had a season-high 22 turnovers and allowed the Deacons two freshmen, Jeff Teague and James Johnson to combine for 50 points. And worse yet, Pimp G was held to seven points and regained all of the punchability he had worked so hard to diminish.