The time is finally here. March Madness has arrived.

While the excitement of March may have already kicked off with the conference tournaments, the true chaos synonymous with this time of year has officially arrived. The NCAA Tournament is here.

In Iowa State’s case, it was given the No. 3 seed and a spot in Milwaukee to take on the 14th-seeded Lipscomb Bisons in the round of 64.

However, as Iowa State gets ready for its push to the national championship, it’ll be without one of its top point scorers, senior guard Keshon Gilbert. He was ruled out for the rest of the year with a lingering groin injury.

The injury had been apparent in the Cyclones’ recent trip to Kansas City for the Big 12 Tournament, as Gilbert only played 11 minutes in their first matchup against Cincinnati before reaggravating an injury that had not been fully healed yet.

In his absence, Iowa State would eventually lose to BYU in the quarterfinals and be sent home early after coming out as the Big 12 Tournament champs a season ago.

During this time, the Cyclones lost another player, junior guard Tamin Lipsey, to a similar groin injury. While Lipsey wasn’t able to play in the loss to the Cougars, head coach T.J. Otzelberger plans for Lipsey to come back in time for the start of the NCAA Tournament.

But with all this injury news, along with the season that Iowa State has had when dealing with inactive players, it raises the question of how far the Cyclones can go without Gilbert and any other potential injuries that may or may not arise.

We’ve seen before how injuries can affect Iowa State’s run in the big dance, with Georges Niang’s foot injury being the highlight about a decade ago, so it’s not out of the ordinary to discuss what this could potentially mean to the Cyclones’ March Madness run even before it begins.

In Gilbert’s case, when Iowa State had to play a full game without him, it went 1-3 with the only win coming at the end of the regular season against Kansas State on the road.

The three losses? Well, those were the Houston loss, in which the Cyclones were missing Gilbert and senior guard Curtis Jones, the Oklahoma State loss, where Iowa State was straight-up outplayed, and the aforementioned BYU loss, one that the Cyclones had a strong push in, but could not find a way past the Cougars’ powerful offense.

While Gilbert’s issue with turnovers has been a problem this season, it still bows in comparison to the impact he had on both sides of the floor, more specifically on the offensive side. He was second on the team in scoring with an average of 13.4 points per game, first in assists with 119 (4.1 per game) and third in steals with 49 (1.7 per game).

On top of that, Gilbert is in his final season of college basketball, so now he will be forced to sit and watch his team attempt to make a national championship push without his talents being added as fuel to their fire.

But even with the recent news involving Gilbert, it still is left to wonder if Iowa State can stay as healthy as possible in its quest for the national crown.

At times this season, we’ve seen the Cyclones deal with the injury bug that has cost them key games, which mainly started when sophomore forward Milan Momcilovic went down for nearly a month after sustaining an injury to his non-shooting hand in practice.

Despite playing in every game as a true freshman a year ago, Momcilovic was forced to sit out and watch Iowa State take its first four conference losses of the season, three of which came in a row, as the team scrambled to find ways to win without the sophomore forward.

Fortunately for the Cyclones, Momcilovic returned, and the winning ways would be restored, at least for a while, until the new set of inactive players for the game against Houston.

Some players, like Lipsey, have been playing through injuries nearly all season. However, it still goes to show that if Iowa State were to drop a player or multiple players due to unforeseen injuries, it could impact how far it can go in this tournament.

All that’s left to do is to hope for the best and see if this team can come together to make a deep run in this daunting tournament.