Otzelberger’s Iowa State didn’t define itself Friday, because it already did all of that work, and that’s what made Friday possible. It’s a group of trained pugilists at its core, and it counterpunched North Carolina into submission, and it’s been doing some version of that for 40 games now. It didn’t confirm the plan would work, because that more or less happened last season, when the Cyclones made the trip from a dystopian two-win-season wasteland to the second weekend of the NCAA Tournament. It didn’t validate Otzelberger as a long-term program builder after some pretty notable attrition in the offseason, because two five-star prospects have signed on to play in Ames starting next year. Which guarantees nothing, yes. But you’re not a ground-floor investor if you’re buying into Iowa State today.