It’s time for the country to take notice of the Cyclones.

That’s Wayne Morgan’s opinion after his ISU men’s basketball team took down No. 19 Virginia 81-79 on Tuesday night.

“When you beat a ranked team, that should garner some national attention,” Morgan said. “That should have people around the country take notice and say, ‘maybe these guys at Iowa State are pretty good after all.'”

One such person to credit the Cyclones was Oklahoma head coach Kelvin Sampson.

“I didn’t see the game, but that didn’t surprise me,” Sampson said. “Iowa State’s always good at home, and we know how good [Curtis] Stinson is.”

Stinson’s 30 points and big three with 14 seconds left sealed the Cyclones’ victory over the Cavaliers. But another player instrumental in the ISU victory was redshirt sophomore Robert Faulkner.

“First and foremost, he has a lot of energy and he plays very, very hard,” Morgan said. “He’s quick off the floor, and he’s a good athlete.”

Faulkner finished with an ISU career high 10 points on 5-of-6 shooting and five rebounds. Faulkner’s time was cut short, though, as he fouled out to a cheering ovation with 7:03 remaining in the game.

“He really did some great things last night in only 15 minutes of playing time because he fouled out,” Morgan said. “But that’s because he plays so hard and he’s excited.”

Morgan said he’s never seen a player receive such applause for fouling out with more than seven minutes left in a game.

“He deserved it,” he said.

Faulkner got his first start as a Cyclone against Virginia, along with ISU freshman Tasheed Carr. Morgan said there may be a few lineup changes as the season progresses.

“As we go down the stretch, obviously we know Curtis Stinson, Will Blalock and Jared Homan are going to start,” Morgan said.

“I think with our other guys, depending on how they play in practice, there may be some changes there.”

As ecstatic as he was about the victory over the Cavaliers, Morgan said his team is still quite young and will need to keep improving.

“If you wanted to measure our immaturity, when we would make a play and timeout would be called, I had trouble getting my guys to the side because they were all jumping and laughing and high-fiving each other,” Morgan said.