Remembering a Sweet 16 Season
The ball was tipped. But I wasn’t in the stadium. Not yet.
The Iowa State women’s basketball team had just tipped off against Georgia in the NCAA tournament round of 32, a home game at Hilton Coliseum. All season, I had told myself that if Iowa State made it to this point, and earned a high enough seed to have a home game, I would be there. And I was, sort of.
At the same time, the Iowa State men’s basketball team was playing the final minutes of its own round of 32 game against Wisconsin. Just a few months ago, this had seemed impossible to imagine, but there they were just minutes away from the Sweet 16. My friend Chris and I stood in the Hilton Coliseum parking lot watching on an iPad. As the women’s game tipped off, I pulled it up on my phone so we could watch both.
The fact that they were playing at the same time was an unfortunate coincidence, one that had played out throughout the season. I could write plenty of words arguing why that shouldn’t happen, but we were where we were.
My emotions were tied to both teams, just as they had been all season.
Entering the season, I had high hopes for the women’s team with Ashley Joens, Emily Ryan and Lexi Donarski. I’m not sure I could have named more than three men’s players at the time.
I attended the first men’s game against Kennesaw State and tried to learn their names as I wondered if they’d win more than 10 games. A little over a week later, I attended my first women’s game of the season as Iowa State controlled the game against Drake at the Knapp Center. I knew that night that Iowa State looked the part of a team that could make a run in the Big 12 and NCAA tournaments.
In December, both teams were off to fantastic starts, in expected fashion for the women and surprising fashion for the men. My wife and I attended the Iowa State vs. Iowa women’s game at Hilton, where I was on the edge of my seat all night. One of the livelier Hilton crowds I had been part of willed the Cyclones to a win over the Hawkeyes for the first time since 2015. The next night, I returned to Hilton to watch the men run Iowa out of the gym in front of a rocking crowd. It felt like the old days of watching teams with Georges Niang and Monte Morris as I yelled at the top of my lungs from the top row.
When Big 12 season began, there was more overlap not only in my emotional state of being but also in the schedule. Overall, the teams played on the same day 12 times during the conference season. A total of seven of those games directly overlapped, and another two tipped off only two hours apart. During several of those days, I had a television and a laptop showing the games concurrently, or I would watch one live and one on tape-delay, or listen to one while driving to Hilton to watch the other.
The best day of the regular season was Feb. 19, when both teams played home games against Oklahoma, and there was no way I was missing this opportunity to attend a doubleheader at Hilton. The men’s team started the day by grabbing the second of what would be a four-game winning streak to propel them into the NCAA tournament. The women capped the day by moving themselves a step closer to a Big 12 regular season championship. Both teams won by more than 20 points. It was as perfect of an ISU basketball day as there could be. Almost.
I attended the final home games for each team, which both ended in similarly disappointing fashion. The women lost a chance to earn a regular season title with an ugly loss to Baylor, and the men broke a four-game winning streak with an even uglier loss to Oklahoma State. It sticks in my mind how similar the crowds were for each game. Both were passionate and intense at the beginning, got progressively more frustrated as the game went on, and left disheartened at the conclusion. Every day is a great day to be a Cyclone, but some days are not as great as others.
The next week, both headed to Kansas City for their Big 12 tournaments. In my opinion, the choice to move each tournament to the same weekend in the same city, only a few hours away from the most passionate combined fanbase, was a winning move by the Big 12. After much debate, I decided to watch from home instead of attending. Despite having doubt that the men’s team could compete with Texas Tech, I still woke up the morning of the game excited for the tournament. There’s always a chance with the Hilton South crowd, and I appreciated ESPN playing up Iowa State’s reputation of filling the T-Mobile Center. (And then the game was as bad as anybody would have guessed.)
The next day, I felt the same anticipation for the women’s game as they opened their tournament against West Virginia. The Hilton South crowd helped pull the Cyclones through. On Saturday, Iowa State matched up against Texas. I had similar feelings of what I had felt for the men’s team two nights earlier, doubting they could compete with Texas. The Cyclones proved me wrong. I cheered from my couch and found myself standing with the Municipal Auditorium crowd as the Cyclones had every opportunity to pull the upset and eventually fell just short in overtime.
Then came Selection Sunday for the NCAA tournaments. I had made plans to get together with friends throughout the tournament’s first weekend, and as a group of mostly Iowa State fans we were antsy to know who our teams would play and at what days and times. Everyone hoped that the men’s and women’s games would be scattered so we could watch the men on television and attend the women’s games at Hilton.
We should have known better. Just as they had all season, the first round games overlapped.
On Friday night, we watched the men win a down-to-the-wire game against LSU. Just as we were ready to relax and celebrate, we realized the women’s game against 14-seed UT Arlington was closer than expected. The women’s team was in real trouble as it trailed by as many as 12 points in the first half.
What a disappointment this would be, I thought.
The Hilton Coliseum Crowd roared through the television as the Cyclones came back down the stretch and avoided a massive upset.
Both teams would play on Sunday for a chance at the Sweet 16.
Surely they won’t make both play at the same time again. Please don’t do it.
They did it.
When the schedule for the round of 32 games came out, Chris and I tried to make the best of the situation. We decided to go to Ames to tailgate for the women’s game while watching the men’s game, and then enter Hilton Coliseum hopefully just a few minutes after tipoff.
About 45 minutes before the men’s game tipped off, we entered the Hilton parking lot. We found a spot away from where most cars would be pulling in with ample space for Chris’s 2-year-old son to play. We admired that there were a couple other groups of tailgaters set up throughout the parking lot seemingly doing the same thing we were doing.
We pulled up Chris’s iPad and set it up in the back of his Jeep. (For reasons too complicated for me to really understand or explain, we didn’t feel we could get a television to work in this case, so we settled for using the biggest screen we could use.) We enjoyed a drink. We grilled. We basked in one of the warmest days of the year so far.
This brings us back to the moment at the beginning of this piece. There we were in the parking lot as the men’s game drew to a stressful conclusion just as the women’s game tipped off.
The nature of March Madness is that every moment in every game feels so important. My adrenaline was high. Every big play the men’s team made had me yelling “YES!” as I pumped my fist, and despite the women’s being in the very early stages, I found myself reacting the same way for their big plays. The women jumped out to an 11-0 lead.
“I think this is the best I’ve seen them play all year!” I said.
“I like that they got off to a good start. It feels like we can pull a little bit of this magic into the men’s game,” Chris replied.
In that moment, in my mind, the fates of both teams were tied together. They were both going to win or both going to lose. I later found out that the Hilton crowd was watching the men’s game during timeouts and were up-to-date on the outcome; their cheers were noticeable to the Cyclone women’s team’s players and coaches.
The women continued to build their lead as the men hung on. As the final horn sounded in the men’s game, Chris and I high-fived and I pumped both fists.
“This is crazy. It doesn’t even feel like it can be real,” I said as a team that went 2-22 the year prior earned a trip to the Sweet 16.
We packed up our tailgate and headed into Hilton, as a handful of other fans joined us having stayed in or by their cars to watch or listen to the end of the men’s game.
We got into our seats just before halftime, and cheered the team to the locker room with a 19-point halftime lead.
The second half felt like a blur. Iowa State comfortably hung on. We clapped and sang to the fight song. We danced and waved our cell phone lights to the “Juicy Wiggle.” We applauded appreciatively as key stars, including the senior Joens, were called to the bench toward the end of the blowout. I soaked in the moment as the team celebrated on the floor, and laughed out loud as I watched Maggie Espenmiller-McGraw get a piggy-back ride to the locker room from Maddie Frederick.
“Are you ready to go?” Chris asked.
“No, but we probably should,” I replied. I wasn’t quite ready to leave this moment.
Neither one of us moved. Instead, we stood there taking it all in for what felt like five more minutes.
Finally we began the walk back to the car. As we reached the bottom of the steps away from Hilton, I shook my head in disbelief.
“This has to be the best single day in the history of ISU athletics, right?” I said.
“I have to imagine it is,” Chris replied.
We half-heartedly tried to decide what previous day could have been better. We gave up pretty quickly.
This was a day to remember.
As ISU radio announcer Eric Heft sometimes says, every day is a great day to be a Cyclone, but some days are better than others.
I wish I could have ended the story there, but we all know what happened next. The teams inexplicably had to play at the same time again the next Friday in the Sweet 16. We had two televisions set up to watch both at the same time. The women’s team got upset by Creighton in a game that ended as the men’s game was just beginning the second half.
As ethe women’s game ended, I tried to push the disappointment out of my mind. I tried to remind myself that the men’s team could still beat Miami, that we could still drive to Chicago two days later to watch an Elite Eight matchup.
I couldn’t get the thought out of my head: Both teams are supposed to lose tonight. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, it just felt right. The fates of both were tied together so much in my mind that I just knew.
When I think back on the season, I will barely remember the losses to end it. I will remember a pair of teams that made fans proud, that gave fans countless memories, that gave us a reason to cheer through a cold Iowa winter and a thrilling first weekend of March Madness.
I will remember standing in the Hilton Coliseum parking lot watching in disbelief as both teams made history.
It was a day to remember in a season I will never forget.
Today, both teams tip off again to start a new season. New memories will be made, maybe even better memories. That’s the beauty of being a fan. We get to be along for every crazy moment of this ride.