For the second time this season, No. 1 Indiana had managed to sneak away with a win after mounting a four-point margin late in the game that proved impossible to overcome.

As someone who had just left the bar and was preparing to walk a mile across town in the snow, this was an agonizing fact to swallow.

But the letdowns didn’t stop there.

Maybe 30 minutes after the game, I checked my Twitter only to find a flurry of interchangeable tweets of varying perspectives in 140 unique characters.

What I learned: somewhere in East Lansing, couches were burning.

As a college­ senior and East Lansing resident of four years, the news of these makeshift bonfires sparking up around town didn’t catch me by surprise. In fact, I just laughed it off.

Images of sofas and loveseats being engulfed in flames following an upsetting defeat have become typical scenes associated with MSU basketball’s recent history. And this riot-like behavior has left an impressionable mark on the reputation of our school.

In 1999, following an NCAA Final Four loss to Duke, an estimated 10,000 students took part in a riot that resulted in nearly $500,000 worth of damages.

In 2003, an early exit in the tournament — brought about by an 85-76 loss to Texas — brought students over the edge and left vending machines and trash cans on their sides.

And most recently, in 2005, another NCAA Final Four loss to North Carolina was enough to stir a mini riot, resulting in tear gas administered against students by the local police.

For obvious reasons, these uproars were grim moments that stained an otherwise sterling reputation associated with our university.

But the events of last week weren’t like these moments, and they shouldn’t even be lumped together in the same conversation.

Sure, the loss to Indiana was a disappointment, but it didn’t invoke behavior similar to the past. The reaction it propelled from students wasn’t malicious, hate-driven or malign in any way.

If anything could be concluded about Tuesday night, it’s that the culprits behind the couch burning didn’t do so with the intent of causing harm. They simply were taking part in a tradition that has stationed itself in a confusing part of MSU’s cultural framework.

As I fell asleep that night, I didn’t assume the events I read about on Twitter would survive into the morning.

As with most of predictions, I was wrong.

By the time I woke up, news of the blazing furniture had found its way into headlines and web pages of major news circuits — including USA Today and CBS Sports.

Instead of learning about the hard-fought loss our school suffered to the No. 1 team in the nation, people around the country were reading about how police still were looking for suspects behind the incidents that followed.

Instead of being a university heralded for having one of the top-tier basketball programs in the country, we were just a school known for couches.

Couches on fire.

But for many people with ties to this university, those headlines didn’t hold much weight. Or, at the least, they know they don’t personify the qualities MSU really embodies.

For many current and past students, faculty members, city of East Lansing residents and Michiganians across the state, the news of couches burning after a loss didn’t demonstrate a community on the brink of disaster. They have grown accustomed to the culture our school has created for itself during the past two decades and have found a way to brush it off as being just a routine act that occurs.

But at some point this needs to stop.

Instead of turning a blind eye to these occurrences and allowing them to exist solely because they have in the past, we all must hold ourselves to a higher standard and take into consideration how these events shape our reputation.

The riot mentality in our college’s culture is a problem created prior to our time at MSU, but is one we only have helped linger.

At some point soon, each of us will have graduated from this university. But the culture of the college will remain.

Do you want to look back at your time at school and say you were part of the change, or just one more person who sat back and allowed it all to live on? I think the answer is simple.

So, no matter what the end result of our basketball team’s season is this March, let’s do our school a favor and save the madness for the court.

Or, at the very least, let’s keep the couches in the living room.

Greg Olsen is the opinion writer at The State News and a professional writing senior. Reach him at jacks920@msu.edu.