Iowa State gives athletic director Jamie Pollard a nice gift by winning Big 12 Tournament title

As you might imagine a latter-day Wizard of Oz, the image of Iowa State athletic director Jamie Pollard beamed from the main screen of the Power & Light District on Saturday afternoon.

“Although I can’t be there physically, I will be there emotionally,” Pollard said, sitting up in his hospital bed in Des Moines, where he was recovering from triple-bypass heart surgery. “Thank you so much for all your thoughts and prayers. I will be back. Go Cyclones.”

The twist on all this was that the man behind the curtain would have been better off paying no attention to what the Cyclones were doing most of this weekend.

Coach Fred Hoiberg agreed.

“Yes!” he said, smiling, as he stood on the court absorbing the moment after Iowa State upended Kansas 70-66 for the Big 12 Tournament championship Saturday at the Sprint Center.

Seconds earlier, the swarm of Iowa State fans had chanted Pollard’s name, a gesture Pollard said, via Twitter, had brought tears to his eyes. And Hoiberg was equally moved.

“This is for Jamie,” Hoiberg said. “I know this helped his therapy the last three days.”

He smiled, paused and added, “At least the end result did.”

But for Pollard’s sake, you might have wanted to add this to laws and sausages as things you wouldn’t want to see being made. That was the one thing Hoiberg regretted forgetting to mention in his conversation earlier in the day with Pollard,

“I should have told him not to watch,” Hoiberg said, “with the stress levels.”

Hoiberg should know. He has been through heart surgery himself, and he has another one ahead to replace a valve.

“I don’t know (exactly when) yet; in the not-too-distant future, though,” Hoiberg said. “I don’t think it really affects me. If it was dangerous, I wouldn’t be out there. I’d have gotten the surgery when it was time, but we keep a close eye on it.”

Which would seem to contradict keeping a close eye on these absurdly gut-churning games:

The Cyclones overcame double-digit deficits to win in the frantic final milliseconds against Texas on Thursday, after which Hoiberg reckoned the game might have given Pollard another heart attack, and against Oklahoma on Friday.

After that night, Hoiberg questioned whether Pollard’s doctor should have let him be watching … and couldn’t resist a special form of sympathizing with him.

When someone started to ask him about Pollard having heart issues, Hoiberg interrupted and deadpanned, “So do I.”

For some reason, the topic came up again Saturday, when the Cyclones were lagging 17 points in the second half.

“Wasn’t looking good,” Hoiberg said.

But once again, Hoiberg remained true to his demeanor, a study in calm reassurance and the strength of restraint and measured words.

“Anything you guys got left in the tank, let’s go leave it out on the floor,” he told his team. “And they did exactly that.”

Through the momentous comeback, he might cross his arms or put his hands on his hips. A few times he seemed to avert his eyes from what he’d just seen to gather himself.

Once, he really went ballistic … by reaching into his pocket to get a piece of gum to go with the cough drop he already had in his mouth.

“Oh, I’m not calm inside, I can tell you that,” he said. “But you’ve got to try to get your guys to stay the course.

“You work all year to put your guys in the position to be successful through the good times and the bad.”

Precarious as the trend might be, now Hoiberg has a team that has been forged in this stuff and would figure to be better off for it entering NCAA Tournament play.

“Whatever happens in the tournament,” he said, “we’ll be ready for it.”

In the process, his team ultimately delivered some form of get-well medicine to Pollard, 50, who suffered the heart attack on Monday while watching a track meet of his children.

Pollard is a former NCAA Division III national champion runner in the 5,000 meters and an avid distance runner to this day, and now he’ll have to be cognizant of how to handle a different sort of long haul.

At least he has an adviser who can relate.

“I’ll continue to talk to him through the recovery process, knowing what it’s like, listening to your body,” Hoiberg said. “But the biggest thing Jamie can’t do is try to play super hero through this thing.”

On Saturday, he had others doing that for him. And the basketball team was only part of that.

Earlier in the day, Pollard’s 12-year-old son, James, ran the Big 12 5K in Kansas City. That’s a fine achievement for anyone, especially a 12-year-old.

But it means a little more from James Pollard, who was 10 pounds when he was born — 6.5 of which was a germ cell tumor attached to his backside.

His life has been one ordeal after another, but he is cancer-free right now and had a ready smile and firm handshake to share on Saturday.

Pollard tweeted out a congratulatory picture of James after the run on Saturday, and if you’re an Iowa State fan — or just a human being, for that matter — it might be enough to make you melt.

That’s why at the end of the day, Pollard’s daughter, Maggie, posted on Twitter that the only thing that would have made this day better would be for their father to be here.

But he was in spirit, about as much as anyone could be.

This story was originally published March 14, 2015 at 10:48 PM with the headline "Iowa State gives athletic director Jamie Pollard a nice gift by winning Big 12 Tournament title."