The Iowa State Men earned their way to play their first two rounds of the NCAA Tournament in Omaha by being a #2 seed. They won their first round game over Otz’s first ever team South Dakota State. This setup a 2nd Round matchup with Washington State. Jesse and I picked up tickets for a cheap $250 a piece and headed to Omaha to watch the Cyclones play.

We met up with Bill at his favorite sports bar before the game and knocked down some tasty chicken wings.

Here are some pictures:

Iowa State struggled a bit early been then pulled away in the 2nd half to win fairly easily.

The arena in Omaha is kind of a dump though. It is lousy enough I’m not even sure I want to claim it as an outpost of Hilton. It is not as nice as Hilton South in Kansas City. The rows are crazy close together, at least for us poors up in steerage. The concourse up in steerage is also incredibly small. A lot of people think the concourse at Hilton proper is too narrow. They should try walking around Hilton West. The scoreboard only shows individual stats for one team and that team on our side, was Washington State. There is a stat board at one end of the arena, but you can’t read all of the stats on it because they have a curtain that covers up about 30 percent of the scoreboard. The arena is so poorly designed that at one point Jesse and I accidentally left the arena and ended up at a high school prom. We had to sweet talk a cop into letting us back into the arena.

All in all it was a great trip, with great friends, watching a great basketball team. I can hardly wait for next season as Iowa State is projected to be a preseason Top 10 next year. It is hard to say how that will ultimately shakes out as there is still a lot of action to go down in the transfer portal. Iowa State still needs to add 2-3 players for next year’s roster. They need 1 more big and 1 more shooter. I was going to do a preview of next season on this post, because I thought Iowa State would have all the hay in the barn from the transfer portal. Unfortunately, John Calipari moving from Kentucky to Arkansas triggered a chain of events that cost Iowa State a transfer from Colorado as the player’s price tag went up to nearly $500,000. Too rich for Iowa State’s blood. So we will wait and see and then do that preview at a later date. Same thing goes for the women.