Show Me My Opponent: Texas A&M

look if your school has a 9,000-word Wiki article about all your goofy traditions I'm simply not gonna like it

EDITOR’S NOTE: No GIFs this time, they’ll be back Saturday.

What do you do after losing a road game after beating #1 in America? Go play another road game! Ah, I love the regular season. Who couldn’t,

Tennessee travels to College Station, TX to take on Traditional Agriculture and Military University, a school with such interesting fashions as addressing a dog by “ma’am” (presumably big with NextDoor moms) and, uh, stuff that I’ve been advised by my legal team to not re-print here. Traditional A&M has done this thing basically every year under head coach and alumnus Buzz Williams where they suck for two months then turn it on in SEC play.

This year’s edition is the most extreme yet: a group that owns home losses to awful Murray State and Wofford teams but is 12-2 in the SEC and has five (!) Quad 1 wins in the last month-and-a-half. The scenario of the Aggies entering March as a darkhorse Final Four candidate is pretty real, and Torvik says they’ve been the seventh-best team in the sport since Christmas. For a presumed 8/9 seed, those are nice numbers. Raise your hand if you thought this was gonna be a Top 25 vs. Top 25 matchup a month ago, or if you thought that it would feel like a must-win for the visitors.

BELOW THE LINE: by the way this isn’t basketball related but can the Nashville Predators please admit they’re bad and SELL SELL SELL ($)