My Nightmare

After the disastrous showing the Ags made the week before last, one of many (six)breathtakingly lopsided/just terribly played games of this season, I made this comment to several people: "I'm done investing any emotion in the Ags this season."

Pop quiz!

Was this statement:

A. Hooey

B. Nonsense

C. Faradiddle

D. Gammon

E. Malarkey *

. . . The answer is, of course, faradiddle. (You thought I would say "all of the above," didn't you? If so, then you have an underdeveloped appreciation of how fun it is to say and to write "faradiddle.")

It helped that they beat Baylor, of course. (Losing to Baylor is only slightly bearable this year, since they're actually pretty good. But losing to Baylor twice? I shudder at the thought.) And when they played Kansas, well . . . they didn't just roll over and die, and that's nice. But what really gets me? Is the bubble.

It's that time of year, isn't it? When the internet is filled with people, paid and unpaid, speculating on who's in and who's out--except those aren't interesting; it's who might be in and who could be in and who's probably out that keep the basketball press churning away.

Take this article: A&M is not in the "should get in," they're in the "work left to do." And that's scary. Because with this team, I never know whether they're going to show up to work or not. Added to that: the "work" is the Big XII tournament, in which Texas A&M has won one game ever. Sure, our first opponent is Iowa State, but that game is an unhatched chicken. I'm not going to count it, and you can't make me!

I mean, from those teams that get categorized as "maybe" or "work left to do," presumably some of them aren't going to cut it. What if my Aggies get left out? And what if that happens and . . . Kentucky gets in?

That's where the nightmare is, ladies and gentlemen. I mean, the Ags started 15-1, Pre-Season NIT champs. Kentucky, on the other hand, started 7-9, including the nightmarish (read: hilarious) loss to Gardner-Webb. That kind of thing really gets a girl's hopes up, is all I'm saying.

But now, according to the Hoopundits, A&M and Kentucky are on equal footing. If, before next Sunday, the two diverge even farther . . . it's going to be a sad, sad day.

On the other hand . . . check this out.

Of course, the brackets probably won't look like this when they're the real thing, but I'd just like to point something out. In the south bracket, the guy has Kentucky as an 8 seed playing Baylor as a 9. In the west, there's BYU as an 8 seed versus Texas A&M at the 9. Now, if you were on the committee, and if I were on the committee, and if people who like to make games interesting were on the committee (hint: one of those might be true and sadly, it's not the one where I'm on the committee), wouldn't we flip those around?

If Kentucky and A&M both end up around there in the middle, I know I wouldn't be shocked if they got paired up. And that would be either the greatest thing or the worst thing ever. (I say that sort of thing a lot, but this time, it isn't faradiddle.) Because we'd either lose (the pain!) or, if the sainted spirits of Reveilles I through VI could talk Jesus into it, win. (Awesome.)

So, like I said . . . I'm still emotionally invested.

*I included a link to the definition of "malarkey" because of the example phrase: "snookered by a lot of malarkey". I plan to employ that phrase whenever possible from here on out.