A hairy situation for BB!

No, Bracket Girl was not happy, to say the least. She walked into the bathroom at the secret lab, took one look at our resident expert, and let out a loud howl that was heard for miles.

“What is that on your FACE?!?!”

Bracket Boy smiled.

“This is my tournament beard,” he said. “In honor of the Final Four - more specifically, the center matchup between Greg Oden and Roy Hibbert - I have decided not to shave until the nets are clipped!”

BG, predictably, was not impressed.

“Um, Bracket Boob?” she said, hands on her hips. “Your head is a basketball, remember? You ever see a Spalding with a goatee?? You don’t grow facial hair. So I ask again: What in the name of Mike Gminski is that on your face?!”

That, not surprisingly, made BBB (Bearded Bracket Boy) blush.

“Well ... I shaved a cat.”

Yes, our man has noticed two trends in this Final Four, and one has nothing to do with basketball. (Big surprise there, eh?)

First, Saturday’s opening game features perhaps the best matchup between two true centers in the Final Four in, well, a very long time.

“And no,” BB said, “Luke Schenscher vs. Emeka Okafor when Georgia Tech played Connecticut in 2004 does not count.”

Seriously. What matches up to this lately? Eric Montross went against Juwan Howard in 1993 when North Carolina played Michigan, and Howard dueled Christian Laettner a year earlier. You had Stacey King vs. Danny Manning in ‘88 and Pervis Ellison vs. Mark Alarie in ‘86.

If we’re talking dominant 7-footers, you’ll have to go back to Hakeem Olajuwon vs. Patrick Ewing in 1984 when Houston played Georgetown. That’s 23 years. Bracket Boy was, well, still just a boy.

Oden vs. Hibbert is an anomaly, one we get only because of the NBA age-limit rule that forced Oden to spend a year in college, and because of the development of Hibbert, who arrived as a project at Georgetown but has emerged into a game-changing force.

“Just ask Carolina,” BB said. “If they were smart enough to foul him out, they might be in the Final Four.”

BB’s second point is that this is also a matchup between two young men who, no matter what the rest of the world says, proudly plan to keep growing their facial hair until they’re ready to shave it (or Gillette offers them a multimillion-dollar deal to do so).

Oden actually arrived on campus last fall with an impressive beard, and brags that he has never shaved in his life. He just tells his barber to trim it. It doesn’t hurt that he looks like he is 35 already. Oh, and that he’s a few months removed from becoming a millionaire.

Hibbert, meanwhile, is taking the NHL approach to shaving: He’s not going to do it until he hoists the Stanley Cup ... er, NCAA trophy. His beard reflects his overall games. It is great in some spots, but shaky in others.

“There’s no hair that’s coming off my body until the end of the season,” he told our intrepid reporter M.A. Mehta in an exclusive interview. “Jeff (Green) is over there laughing at me right now because he knows I’m not going to cut my hair. ... People say I look scruffy, but it’s good luck. Coach Thompson calls it my postseason beard and hair ... so I’m just going to keep growing it.”

And good for him. This figures to be the shaggiest Final Four since P.J. Carlesimo brought Seton Hall there in 1989. For the record, P.J. is the only bearded coach in national championship game history.

“Now that P.J., he has a beard!” BB said, and then he glanced into the mirror. “I need to find me another cat.”

This column appears in the March 28 edition of The Star-Ledger.