Glorious craziness

And, no, we're not talking here about the raving of the Great Unhinged Party yesterday in defense of its corrupt divine. That was simply what Hunter Thompson used to call "bad craziness," a wonderfully apt term for what frequently breaks out in certain corners of the republic.

Glorious craziness, on the other hand, is what broke out again in Lexington, Ky., last night. And really all over the landscape of college buckets these days.

What happened was the sixth-ranked, homestanding Kentucky Wildcats lost again in the sanctuary of Rupp Arena, and again to an unranked team. This  time it was Utah who made Big Blue blue, barely a month after Evansville shocked the Kats.

So chaos continues to roil college basketball's waters, and nothing could  lovelier in an era when the sport has become little more than an anteroom for NBA-bound lottery picks. Kentucky is now 8-2, and both losses have come in Rupp. Duke lost in Cameron Indoor to Stephen F. Austin, a 27-point underdog. A Purdue team that's 7-4 now and has already lost badly to a puny Nebraska outfit beat defending national champion Virginia by 29. An Ohio State team that was unbeaten and ranked second at the time lost by 13 to 4-5 Minnesota.

And so it goes, and so it goes.

And if this does not bode well for stability, it does bode well for college buckets as a whole.  Stability, as it applies here, is both boring and overrated. It's why chalk on the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament is the worst thing that can possibly happen for everyone who profits from it; March Madness isn't, after all, if there's no madness.

Conversely, nothing rivets the attention like the idea that anyone can lose at any time to anyone anywhere. That's what we've got right now, as the season heads toward January and conference play heats up. So, yes, lovely chaos, and glorious craziness.

Your new No. 1 team, by the way, is Kansas. The Jayhawks haven't lost since Nov. 5, when Duke beat them by two in the first game of the season. Saturday they're at No. 18 Villanova; their next home game is against unranked Stanford on Dec. 29.

Can't be sure, because the Blob's hearing isn't what it used to be. But I think the basketball gods just chuckled.