Sports fans and hippies, your Kent State men’s basketball team is being nationally recognized as one of the top teams in the country.

I will now examine the 22 teams above them on the AP top 25, with the first ever “Chump teams that are lucky to be ranked higher then Kent State.”

22. Washington State, 21-6: Their coach’s name is Tony Bennet. Kent State won near San Francisco, isn’t that ironic?

21. Marquette, 20-6: Big East hype? I think it’s because Chris Farley went there. Tom Crean must eat a steady diet of government cheese and live in a van down by the river.

20. Drake, 24-3: Keno Davis – that’s their coach’s name. I’m not trying to make fun of the coaches here, but Keno sounds like an O.J. Simpson house guest.

19. Michigan State, 22-5: Magic Johnson lead them to the 1979 National Championship. If the Spartans want to win it this year, they better stop being that over-ranked Big Ten team and get Magic to come back for his junior season.

18. Vanderbilt, 23-4: Vanderbilt’s so smart, they don’t need an athletic department. They haven’t had one since 2005.

17. Notre Dame, 21-5: Football season starts in September. Maybe they’ll score more than 17 by the end of the season.

16. Purdue, 21-6: “Boilermakers” is the coolest nickname in the country. But do you know what a Boilermaker drink is? A shooter style shot glass filled with Beer and Whiskey. Figures they would rank the Irish next to the Boilermakers.

15. Connecticut, 21-6: Despite the loss over the weekend, Jim Calhoun has his Huskies playing pretty well lately. Maybe that late season success will push to them to be one of the last 16 teams in the tournament … the Big East tournament.

14. Butler, 25-3: Bulldogs lost to other Bulldogs, where was Michael Vick?

13. Louisville, 22-6: Star forward David Padgett broke his knee cap in November and is playing right now. A BROKEN KNEE CAP.

12. Indiana, 23-4: (ring-ring) My name is Kelvin Sampson and I coached Indiana. I just wanted you to know that I will not be coaching the Hoosiers anymore. So, sorry for calling you and texting you 1,000,000 times the past two weeks and please ignore the flowers I sent you.

11. Georgetown, 22-4: John Thompson is the coach. Patrick Ewing is one of the stars. But, sadly, Ewing and Thompson are both sequels to their box-office successful fathers.

10. Wisconsin, 23-4: Brian Butch’s elbow injury last season still haunts my dreams at night.

9. Xavier, 24-4: The Musketeers have the best record in the city of Cincinnati. I don’t care: Let’s go Bearcats, because as the shirts on the Cincinnati campus say, “Xavier girls are ugly.”

8. Stanford, 22-4: If Purdue has the best nickname, the Stanford Cardinal have the best mascot, the Tree.

7. Duke, 23-3: Unless the Blue Devils throw a party … I won’t even finish this one, but it had to do with a party and canceling the Blue Devils’ season.

6. Kansas, 24-3: I was born in Kansas. Jayhawks don’t lose games; They choose not to win games because they want to build-up Texas, Kansas State and Oklahoma State’s self esteem for March. It makes those players cry more when the Jayhawks beat the snot out of them in the Big 12 tournament.

5. Texas, 23-4: The Longhorns will go far in March because they have a great point guard in sophomore D.J. Augustin. But let’s remember, too much burnt orange is never a good thing.

4. UCLA, 24-3: Teams that are called the Bruins tick me off. It’s like they’re too good to be called “bears,” so they have to confuse all four year olds by calling them “Bruins.” Are bruins black bears, grizzly bears or gummy bears?

3. North Carolina, 26-2: Because the ACC is weak, I think the best match in the conference would be Roy Williams jousting Duke’s “Coach K.”

2. Memphis, 26-1: The Tigers shoot 58 percent from the line. How they are ranked this high and won that many games, while shooting worse than the Akron YMCA team, just proves to me that Conference USA should be renamed “The French Conference.”

1. Tennessee, 25-2: When did the state of Tennessee become the state of North Carolina? Vanderbilt, Memphis and the Vols all in the top 25. Tennessee makes me think of whiskey and country music, not hoops and hardwood.

Contact assistant sports editor

Joe Harrington at [email protected].