The Week In Chaos Bubble Edition, March 3: St. Joseph's Implodes; Kentucky Sheds Mediocrity... By Losing; Ohio State Soils Self

Even your gimpy, Faux-hawked, bench-dwelling self, Greg, could improve this Ohio State team.

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.

Always one to adapt to my environment, I will be shaking things up with the Week In Chaos this time around. The Top 25, while still yielding its fair share of ass-backwardness (see: Texas Tech over Texas, Bowling Green over Kent State, Indiana getting butt-pummeled by Michigan State), it was a fairly timid week as far as catastrophes go. But on the back end of the "relevant" teams, i.e. the Bubble, things have gone completely haywire resulting in the most mediocre Bubble of my lifetime. If you look at the Bracketology (or you can go here, which includes more gratuitous Ashley Judd), all the teams below about a No. 9 seed are absolutely atrocious, have only earned their perilous spot in the NCAAs by "losing less abominably" and wouldn't make any March Madness of the past decade. So instead of leaving those teams' suckiness in the shadows let's focus on the real purveyors of mediocrity, the Bubblers.

Most Ridiculous Display of Mediocrity- If you are a Philadelphia sports fan, I'm going to save you some time and deep thinking: No, life is not worth living. Given the struggles of its pro teams this year, Philly could take solace in the tradition-rich Big 5, the proudest in-city rivalry series in the country, providing some entertainment or triumph. Surely Villanova, a team ranked for much of the season, and St. Joe's, a talented team rising up the standings of the upstart Atlantic 10, would give Philadelphians some kind of postseason thrill. Well, actually, no. Villanova defecated the bed and with St. Joe's as the city's last, best hope of avoiding a shutout in the NCAA Tournament, it lost to St. Louis and Temple last week, both at home (although the Temple game was at the Palestra, a neutral site but considered a Hawks home game). Yes, with the season on the line, the Hawks lost to the mighty Billikens, 20-point losers to St. Bonaventure Saturday, 20-point scorers against George Washington this year and protector of its rotund, penis-exposing, baby-killing overlord, Rick Majerus. Despite having a considerable size advantage, the Hawks were outrebounded by 14 and allowed the excruciatingly conservative Billikens to take 19 foul shots. St. Joe's then blew a 14-point second half lead last night to Temple, which ironically now might have a better tournament resume than the Hawks. Somehow the Sixers are suddenly Philadelphia's best chance at a postseason victory this year... pause for coldhearted reality to set in... That is not a world I want to live in.

Most Narrow Avoidance of Mediocrity That Should Not Be Forgotten But Will Be- Bare with me on this one because I am going to switch this category up a bit at the risk of blowing your mind. The "winner" of this award is Kentucky, which lost by three at Tennessee Sunday. Now, you ask, how can a three-point loss be considered a narrow avoidance of mediocrity? Well, because it was a MUCH closer game than anyone could have expected. Given the craptasticness of the Bubble this year, Kentucky actually gained ground BY THE WAY IT LOST. Yes, it has gotten that bad this year. The Wildcats, who have done everything asked of them in conference play to turn their once lowly season around, were on the precipice of a backdoor at-large bid by simply beating the mediocre morass of the SEC (and Vandy and Tennessee at home) and watching as everyone else lost. Then they got the awful news that Patrick Patterson, a guy who carried the Cats for a good portion of the season when they were merely trying to stop the bleeding, was out for the year with an ankle injury. With that injury, most right-minded basketball folk thought, went Kentucky's tourney hopes and certainly any chance of staying within 20 in Knoxville over the weekend. Instead the Cats slowed the game to their own tempo, played that hard-nosed Billy G D and fought valiantly to a narrow defeat. Reserve Perry Stevenson played outstanding in Patterson's absence with 13 and 14 and UK showed the committee that it can compete even without its best player. There's no reason the Cats should be evaluated any differently now than they would've been with Patterson and I still think wins over South Carolina and Florida to close the regular season and a semifinal SEC Tourney run might be enough for an at-large given the Bubble carnage elsewhere. I have them in as a 13 seed in tomorrow's Bracketology, Just Because. And yes, your mind just got blown. Hope it was as good for you as it was for me.

Most Embarrassing Realizations of Mediocrity- Look, anyone who knows anything about college hoops, knows Ohio State is a bad basketball team. Yet somehow it had managed to manipulate an overrated schedule and an awful bottom half of the Big Ten to make it look like a possible tournament team. No more. The Buckeyes have now lost four straight (including one to Michigan) and capped off that postseason-destroying run with a thrashing at the hands of Minnesota Saturday. The Gophers, who improved their record to a stellar 1-9 against the RPI Top 100 with the win, have given up 84 points to the seldom-oiled tinmen of Illinois this season and OSU could only manage 57. It was the second-slowest paced game of the season for the Gophers and the Buckeyes still sent them to the line 25 times (the only teams to play shittier defense send the Gophers to the line at a higher rate this year are Central Michigan, South Dakota State and Northwestern). In a league where any self-respecting tourney hopeful is basically handed double-digit conference wins, the Buckeyes are now tied with Minnesota at 8-8 with home games against Purdue and Michigan State closing out the regular season. If they can win both (and they are 0-5 against the top four in the Big Ten this year) then maybe they will look good enough to get massacred by a No. 4 or 5 seed in March. Keep your fingers crossed Buckeye fans!