The Morning According To Us: When The Bubble Bursts (Georgetown edition)

The human side of a team's NCAA Tournament hopes crashing into nothingness.

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"Chances are this marker in my hand isn't getting to Detroit this season."

On the train in the morning, we read one of three things: The New York Post (salacious = fun), The New York Times (informative = helpful), or whatever book is in our backpack (right now, it's Nick Hornby's Slam, which a recent security checkpoint monitor told us 'would be funnier if the author's name was Nick Horny.'). This morning, Option II won out (read this free-throw shooting piece, by the way). We were a lil' depressed, since we went to Georgetown and the bubble, insofar as someone somewhere in the District was still blowing it, popped last night with a demoralizing loss to St. John's.

Sadly, things just got worse when we opened the paper.

The New York Times picked up an Associated Press report of the game, which identified it as being at Carnesecca Arena in Queens. Naw. It was at Madison Square Garden, which some people call "The Mecca." The facilities are quite different.

This oversight means one thing, simply: even the Associated Press make mistakes now and again. At a deeper level, it means this, at least to a Hoya: the game was so insignificant going in, and even more insignificant coming out, that details such as 'the exact location' are hardly to be considered relevant. Sadly, that's probably true.

Across the next three weeks, Google Trends will be big on words like "bubble" and "bracket." (You should follow along on ESPN Insider with these two series: Inside the Bracket and Bubble Insider.) (). People get caught up in that stuff, and rightfully so: 'tis fun, and makes for good bar discourse. But there is a human element to your team completely crappin' out.

When you're sitting in nosebleed seats surrounded by a bunch of people you vaguely remember from five years ago that you never really wanted to talk to then (and certainly don't know!), with a guy that looks vaguely like the Governor of New York hovering over your right shoulder, wondering if anyone is gonna make a beeline for those chocolate chip cookies sitting innocently in a nearby foyer, and wondering how it's possible that a team with two potential Top 20 picks (DaJuan Summers and Greg Monroe) might not even be worthy of the NIT—that's the human side of a bubble burst. As Bruce Willis tells Ving Rhames in Pulp Fiction, "That's pride (expletive) with ya." Truth. For the next few weeks, in Carnesecca Arenas and Meccas all over the major conferences, pride will (expletive) with ya. That's just the real side of bubbles bursting.

ELSEWHERE:

There have been arrests in the Sri Lankan cricket team attack.

"Phone works after week in fish." That's what she said.

Frankly, this just looks terrifying and dangerous.

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