Ram weak

I admit it: I got caught up in the whirlwind. I drank the Kool-Aid. I was convinced, just like you were.

A day after I watched the Unviersity of Rhode Island men's basketball team fend off UMass at the Ryan Center, giving the Rams a 19-3 record and 7-2 mark in the Atlatnic-10, I wrote how these Rams have what it takes to get to the Big Dance. I wrote how they won't fold like the Rams of old, the same ones that also started 19-3 before choking down the stretch.

Looks like I was wrong. Yes, I was on that bandwagon, the one that had Rhody already in the field of 65, and perhaps going pretty deep in the tournament. The bandwagon that claimed URI had the two senior leaders in Keith Cothran and Lamont Ulmer and a great group of role players.

So what happened? Well, URI fell at home to Richmond, Cothran violated team rules and missed the start of the Temple game, a blowout loss, and last night, the Rams were knocked off by a hot Saint Louis team.

Now our state university, the one everyone thought surely was going dancing for the first time since 1999, is 7-5 in the A-10, and it's one big win - on the road against Dayton - doesn't seem all that big anymore. Rhody's RPI ranking, which rose to as high as No. 3 and was at No. 13 after the UMass win, has plummeted to No. 74 this morning.

We should have seen this coming. We've all been here before, so why did we think it would all of a sudden change? We all drank that Kool-Aid when we should have been reaching for Pepto Bismol.