Hines

MILWAUKEE – What do you say when it’s just not meant to be? When all the work, want-to and wherewithal find a dead-end with destiny? The basketball gods blessed Iowa State with all the ingredients needed to make a run. In the Big 12. In the NCAA Tournament. On history. 

The celestials governing basketball bestowed the Cyclones with the talent, experience and cohesion to make them one of the country’s best teams. They even let coach T.J. Otzelberger’s team see the potential of those gifts with what almost certainly were among the two best months of basketball this program has ever seen. Perhaps the most vexing aspect of the Cyclones’ fall is how so much of it felt so out of their control. And how it felt like this season was sliding to this sort of conclusion in slow motion for weeks.“We saw what we could do when everyone was clicking, everyone was playing well,” sophomore Milan Momcilovic said from a somber locker room. “We were one of the top teams in the country. We were having a lot of fun together, and then it’s just tough with injuries, substituting guys in and out. Different lineups.  

Momcilovic’s broken hand in the middle of January was the harbinger of what was ahead. The magic that the eight men in the Cyclones’ rotation created together vanished in his absence. 

This loss absolutely does not define this year’s Cyclones, but it is illustrative of how difficult things became after basketball looked so easy for this team for so long. Those deities overlooking the hardwood, though, used those blessings in service of their cruelest curse. Iowa State’s season ended Sunday with its 91-78 loss to Ole Miss in the second round of the NCAA Tournament, but it was a slow, painful and tortuous demise that started in January. Curtis Jones missed a game with illness. Gilbert missed two with his groin strain. Then another. And another. Until his season was declared over by Otzelberger on Selection Sunday. “It sucks.” It’s difficult to say it more succinctly, bluntly and, most importantly, accurately than that. The entire ordeal just feels extremely unfair and unfulfilling. Instead of going out swinging, the Cyclones exited limping. Keshon Gilbert was back in Ames with a season-ending groin injury.  Tamin Lipsey was hobbling around the Fiserv Forum floor with his own groin injury . He looked more like the church-league grandpa who doesn’t know he should have stopped playing years ago than the relentless point guard Lipsey is at his best. “Not feeling great,” Lipsey said. “Feeling good enough to go out there and compete and try to win. It sucks, but it is what it is. “Probably one of the toughest games. Things just not feeling great and hard to be my normal self out there.” It all led to a season-ending loss befitting your run-of-the-mill, mediocre college team. Not one that once looked like the class of the country. Iowa State, one of the country’s best on defense, saw the Rebels shoot 58.2 percent from the field and 57.9 percent from 3-point range. The Cyclones, one of the toughest, most aggressive and physical teams in the country, looked listless as they fell behind by as many as 26. “Tonight wasn’t our best,” Otzelberger said, “but it also doesn’t define us. The young men in our program have fought a lot this year, and we’re proud of how they have worked every single day.” More: Hines: Iowa State basketball gets its final chance to write its legacy

The basketball beauty that Iowa State showed the country in those first few months never returned. All that was left was the hope, real or invented, that it could be recreated in time to allow this team a chance to be at its best when the best get to cut down nets. Iowa State was 15-1 overall, perfect in the Big 12 and ranked No. 2 in the country. The hope of history dripped off the banners at Hilton Coliseum. The possibilities of greatness pulsated out of Ames and into the rest of the country. 

All that could have been, snuffed out amid injury and inconsistency. Unfulfilled hope. There was hope it might reappear with Momcilovic’s return and the subsequent four-game winning streak that ensued, but, again, that hope was not a favor. It was a trap. Then it was all taken away. That magnificent basketball of November, December and half of January still happened. The joy and memories of that electric, dynamic and world-beating basketball team are as much a part of this team’s story as how the season ended. But there will always be a lingering feeling of unfairness. That this team didn’t deserve the fate that found it. That the forces of basketball karma undid the Cyclones’ season more than missed shots, turnovers and blown defensive assignments. A season that failed to live up to expectation because of a team’s own shortcomings, failures and flaws is its own disappointment. One that feels earned. Fair. A season that ends with disappointment because of the randomness of a broken hand or the fickleness of a core muscle is a different, worse sort of fate. One that feels authored not by its participants, but by something unseen.  Iowa State was great early this season. The Cyclones could have been special this spring. Worse than the losses that piled up in the Big 12 or the one that ended their season Sunday is knowing what could have been without ever really having a chance to chase it. Iowa State columnist Travis Hines has covered the Cyclones for the Des Moines Register and Ames Tribune since 2012. Contact him at thines@amestrib.com or (515) 284-8000. Follow him on X at @TravisHines21.