Get ready for it, please – because it won’t be too amusing.

Today, tomorrow and for the rest of the week, UMass hoop critics from around New England will rise up once more and remind us all why the Massachusetts men’s basketball team isn’t as good as everyone thought it was.

And I sincerely wish them all the luck in the world with the construction of that argument.

Really, what is there to say?

“They lost to Holy Cross,” will be the most popular assertion. But what follows? Probably something like, “uh, they lost to the Crusaders.”

It’s much harder this year to construct the “UMass isn’t going anywhere” argument. Last year, when the Minutemen dropped a 78-65 decision to Holy Cross at the Centrum Centre in Worcester to drop to 1-2 on the season, the Maroon and White faithful really couldn’t argue against anything the doubters had to say.

But this time around, after UMass’ 76-65 loss to the Crusaders last night at the Mullins Center, the Minutemen are still 4-1. They have beaten Orgeon. They have beaten N.C. State (on Tobacco Road). And most importantly, UMass is not a team that’s used to losing. They just got a bit too used to winning, and had trouble focusing in on a 2-3 squad from the Patriot League that had lost its three previous games to Manhattan, Dartmouth and Boston University.

“Overconfidence, without a doubt, in my opinion,” said Head Coach Steve Lappas immediately after the game. “Every time you play, you have to respect the scoreboard. And we didn’t respect the scoreboard because we thought we should be beating them by 10.”

Teams can use “overconfidence” as an excuse. They can say they just didn’t get up enough for the game, and before they knew it, they were down 10 points with five minutes left in the contest. It’s a decent justification for a blunder.

But Lappas won’t take it as one, even though he knew it was bound to happen. With his hiring, so began the rebuilding years of UMass basketball – years that, with any program, aren’t immune to unexpected dips.

“I talked about it from the beginning of the year, that there was going to be a time – I didn’t know when, where, what – that there was going to be a hard lesson to be learned,” said Lappas, who in his nine seasons at Villanova had only two losing campaigns. “And unfortunately when you’re building something, you learn more from bad nights sometimes than you learn from good nights.”

And Tuesday night was one of those bad nights. The key for the Minutemen is to bounce back in the next two games versus No. 13 Boston College Saturday and UConn on Tuesday.

Losing to Holy Cross isn’t the end of the world. Actually, if you allow yourself to believe that some losses are good ones, then this was a good one. Let’s just say UMass blew out the Crusaders last night. When would the Minutemen realize they weren’t going to go undefeated? Probably Saturday at B.C.

Instead, Lappas’ preparation exercises for the clash at Conte Forum will be some of the most memorable hours ever for his 14-man roster. He wasn’t too happy last night.

“There’s going to be a lot to be learned from this game,” Lappas said. “I knew it was coming. It was inevitable, because we didn’t handle our success and where we were well. We started to think of something we weren’t, and we’re not. And that’s my fault probably more than anybody’s.”

In any case, nothing is over yet. It could be in a few weeks, but UMass’ performances in its first four games kind of negate that prophecy.

Remember, no excuses. Just lessons. Perfection does not exist in sport, especially in college basketball.