Here’s the question of the week: What’s the most confusing thing on the ISU campus?

Your English professor? Quantum physics? Why DPS is allowed to exist? The meaning of life?

Nope. All those questions, while valid thoughts to ponder, pale in comparison to the real ISU mystery – just what is happening with the ISU men’s basketball team?

Twenty games into the season, most fans have an idea of what to expect from their team.

Usually it’s clear by now whether your team will win 14 games and sit at home eating cookies during postseason play or whether they will fight their way to 20 or so wins and a place in the NCAA tournament.

Not these Cyclones. Both possibilities are just as likely.

As a historically horrible road team, the Cyclones have won their last two Big 12 games away from the friendly confines of Hilton Coliseum and six of their last eight conference road games.

And while that should be cause for celebration, the flip side of the coin is just as perplexing and even more frustrating for ISU players and fans alike.

The Cyclones used to have one of the most feared home court advantages in college basketball. “Hilton Magic” was a force to be reckoned with. Suddenly the magic is gone, turned into something else.

Will Blalock said it best last week, coining the phrase “Hilton Tragic.” He’s right.

After losing just one game at home during the 2003-04 season and just three last year, the Cyclones have dropped five games on their home court.

Only twice in the last 12 seasons has an ISU team lost this many games at home, falling six times in Tim Floyd’s last season and hitting the same number of losses in 2001-02.

But both of those were rebuilding seasons.

In Floyd’s last year (1997-98), Iowa State was trying to find a way to replace all five starters, all who were lost to graduation. Those five starters included Kelvin Cato and Dedric Willoughby, both who went on to play basketball for money the next year.

Same story for the 2001-02 season. Replacing Jamaal Tinsley, Kantrail Horton and Paul Shirley isn’t done overnight.

Speaking of Shirley, go see the movie Glory Road. Shirley has a small, non-speaking part in the film. He plays a guy on one of Texas Western’s opposing teams and does nothing but block shots and rebound. It’s great.

He is, without a doubt, the greatest success story in the history of athletics.

Shirley came to Iowa State as a walk-on, earned a starting spot as a sophomore, then broke his pelvis and had to sit out a season, came back and played two more years, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering and went on to play in the NBA.

Not only did he do that, he wrote the greatest online sports diary this side of Bill Simmons. And he turned his journeyman history into a book deal, a spot in a great sports movie and a possible TV show based on his life.

He was the player who sat on the end of the ISU bench and cried after the Cyclones lost to Michigan State in the 2000 Elite Eight. Second worst day of my life.

The worst? The next season when ISU lost to Hampton in the first round of the tourney. I will never visit Boise!

Talk about confusing. How did we get from ‘Hilton Magic’ to the two worst days of my life?

Welcome to the life of a Cyclone basketball fan.

– Grant Wall is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Fort Dodge.