Saturday was almost a perfect day in college basketball.

Everything was falling into place just the way I wanted. The three unbeaten teams – Duke, Florida and Pittsburgh – all lost. On top of this, my side was aching after laughing so hard at the 30-point defeat Michigan State handed the Hawkeyes.

This was almost as funny as hearing Colts’ kicker Mike Vanderjagt tell David Letterman that Peyton Manning is the “Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan of football.” What? That might be a good line for Letterman to get a few laughs, but for Vanderjagt to say that with a straight face was down right hilarious. I’ve got a better metaphor for the kicker: Manning is the Archie Manning of our generation. And if championships were the measure of a family, the Mannings would be the BBMak of the music world.

I was in a terrific mood until Texas A&M bench warmer Kenneth White decided to ruin my day. His two 3-pointers were daggers for the ISU faithful.

This loss to the Aggies was even harder to swallow than the Texas Tech loss. The Cyclones had a chance to go 3-2 in the conference, and improve their record to 13-5. But, no – ISU athletics fell into another overtime defeat. As an ISU fan, I feel like Bill Murray stuck in the sports edition in the movie “Groundhog Day.”

On top of the loss, I had to sit through the worst commentating joke of all time. When Tasheed Carr came onto the court, the announcer boastfully told his new joke. “If Iowa State basketball was a movie right now, it’d be, ‘Dude, where’s my Carr.'” No. Please spare me the dumb jock humor. We are all worse off after hearing that.

I can just see him sitting in his room, trying to come up with something clever for the television audience. He has writer’s block, so he looks through the ISU lineup, then moves to his DVD collection. All of a sudden, genius hits him. He writes it down and waits for the perfect time to tell the joke. That perfect time came, and we all suffered mightily. Tasheed, you were a victim of Carson Daly-type humor. I send my deepest condolences.

The entire game had a good vibe. Outstanding games by Ross Marsden and Jiri Hubalek were very pleasing to watch. Curtis Stinson dropped 27 points after a tough week. There were so many positives – it left me shaking my head in disbelief. At the end of the game, the crowd’s faces were the same as the players. No one had to say anything – we all were thinking the same thing. Did we really just lose that game?

Unfortunately, we did. And it’s going to take a lot of heart to bounce back. The next two games are against Missouri and Kansas, so they don’t have time to look back.

Hopefully, the team shows the same resilience as last year, and learns from these types of games. If not, my hangover from football season is going to linger until March Madness, and Mayor Ann Campbell is going to declare “almost” the official ISU word.

– Ward Phillips is a sophomore in pre-journalism and mass communication from Des Moines.