After a few years drought, it appears that Iowa State’s men’s basketball team is headed to great things once again.

The Cyclones defeated No. 12 Kansas 74-66 Saturday afternoon in a game legendary ISU coach Johnny Orr would have surely declared a “dinger.”

Suffering through a poor offensive game, Iowa State’s cagers clamped the defense on the Jayhawks down the stretch and relied on stellar shooting from the charity strike to upset the perennial powerhouse.

The Cyclones showed Saturday that they are a force to be reckoned with in the Big 12 conference and even on a national scale.

And though this was obviously the biggest win of the year for the ‘Clones, many of the players tried to downplay the impact of the game.

“I don’t think we’ve earned anything yet,” said forward Paul Shirley, whose toughness in the first half was instrumental to the Cyclone victory when star forward Marcus Fizer was benched with three fouls. “This is a tough league, and we’ve just got to keep going.”

That may be, but before the boys in cardinal and gold move on, it cannot hurt to stop for a moment and bask in the glory of victory.

The win had to be a joy for ISU head coach Larry Eustachy, who, after taking over for ex-head coach Tim Floyd last season and posting a less-than-impressive .500 record, has guided his team to one of the best starts in school history.

To take over for a coach as popular as Floyd was not an easy task, and with this win, Eustachy might have finally stepped out of Floyd’s shadow, proving his own worth as a head coach.

Certainly the win was sweet for Fizer, the man child who was heralded as a NBA lottery lock since he first stepped foot into Hilton Coliseum.

Even though Iowa State beat Kansas last year at home, this was the first big-time conference win that has mattered since Fizer got to Ames.

And last but not least, Saturday’s victory was a vindication for the ISU fans.

Two years ago, we were forced to watch the Cyclone men struggle through a season in which the biggest story was whether Floyd would be leaving at the end of the ride.

Last year, we winced in pain as our beloved ‘Clones showed rare spurts of excellence while seemingly playing the majority of their games in slow motion, often making silly mistakes and showing a complete lack of ball-handling ability.

But that’s all water under the bridge now. Sure, the win Saturday was just one game, but it was undeniably one heck of a game.

Hopefully, it was a foreshadowing of things to come.

Iowa State Daily Editorial Board: Sara Ziegler, Greg Jerrett, Kate Kompas, Carrie Tett and David Roepke.