A junior from the Chicago suburb of Western Springs, Ben Pera was driving home from spring break, wondering how in the world he was going to fill a week that was supposed to revolve around watching hype leading up to his school, Kansas University, competing in the Midwest Regional in St. Louis. His girlfriend, Emily Leet of Overland Park, was riding shotgun. Pera’s high school friend, Jack Maher, was in the back seat.

Pera’s rear-view mirror punched him in the gut, took the wind right out of him, as only flashing red lights can. We’ve all been there, done that. At least when it happens in Lawrence, you sense cops sometimes feel bad about having to do their jobs. Well, that wasn’t the case for Pera, who was pulled over just before crossing the Mississippi River from Illinois into Iowa.

“Cop gave me a ticket for speeding, and he asked where we were going, and I said I go to KU and was driving back to school,” Pera said. “He said, ‘Have a nice day. Keep it under the speed limit. Go Northern Iowa!’ I was pretty annoyed because he had just written me an $87 ticket, and it was a day after we lost, and he says that.”

Maher, 21, works full-time at the Chicago Board of Trade during the day and attends Columbia College Chicago full-time at night. He took a vacation week at work to coincide with his spring break from school and thought about hanging out with friends in Arizona. Instead, he chose to come to Kansas.

“Put a damper on my week,” Maher said. “I was looking forward to spending the week watching games with my friends at Kansas. ESPN hasn’t been on all week.”

Asked to describe the vibe on campus, Pera pointed to the gray skies and waved his hand in the cold, moist air.

“The weather kind of explains the mood,” he said. “The weather’s really bad, and everybody’s kind of bummed out. Just shocked. Opportunities like that don’t come along very often where you have the best team. I can’t believe I have to wait a whole year for college basketball to be back. My freshman year was when we won it. It was the greatest two-week ride ever.”

Maher shook his head thinking back on the guts it took for Ali Farokhmanesh, Northern Iowa’s sawed-off giant/giant-killer, to take that wide-open three-pointer with a one-point lead, 35 seconds left in the game and 32 seconds left on the shot clock.

“You know he’s been making that shot on a hoop hanging off a barn all his life,” Maher lamented.

Farokhmanesh hit a deeper wide-open three with 4.9 seconds left to give Northern Iowa a 69-66 victory against UNLV in the first round. The son of an Iranian Olympic volleyball player, Farokhmanesh has made nine of 19 three-point shots in the tourney.

On Monday, Farokhmanesh’s coach, Ben Jacobson agreed to a 10-year contract that hikes his salary from $289,300 to $450,000 next year with annual raises of $25,000 throughout the deal that runs through 2020. That’s why college basketball coaching is the greatest of all professions, except when it’s the worst. Farokhmanesh doesn’t bring his touch in the first round, and the folks in Cedar Falls, Iowa, are grousing about how their coach can’t win the big one.