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By Matt Pfiffner There's a new coaching staff and some new faces in the Iowa State wrestling room this season. But one thing hasn't changed...the Cyclones have high expectations entering the 2009-10 campaign.
Jackson and the rest of the Cyclones were on display Tuesday afternoon in Ames at media day. The new Cyclone head man, who was an All-American at ISU and an Olympic Champion, takes over for another ISU legend, Cael Sanderson, who left for Penn State after last season. "I don't feel any pressure. I feel zero pressure. The bottom line is, I've been in wrestling for a long time and ever since I've been in wrestling I've been trying to be the best I can be. Whether it's city champ or Olympic champ," Jackson said. "So when I come into a program like Iowa State, regardless of the expectations of what this team's capable of, they by no means exceed what my expectations are. "I feel like if I do everything in my power to train these guys the right way and give them the right mentality and the spectrum of tactical skills that they need, it all falls into the process of what we do every day in the room. Because the National Championship isn't going to be won in March, it's going to be won every day in this Iowa State room. I don't necessarily feel any pressure at all. Now when December 6 (at home against Iowa) shows up and you have 15,000 in the stands and you're expecting to win and you're expecting to perform, I'm sure I'll feel a some butterflies. But I can't go out and wrestle for these guys. All I can do is train them. They have to go out and perform." The Cyclones performed well enough at the end of last season to finish third in the NCAA Div. I National Championships behind Iowa and Ohio State. ISU returns five All-Americans, led by 197-pound defending champ Jake Varner. Varner may be the lone Cyclone who has won a National title, or even wrestled for one, for that matter, but he said everyone in the lineup has that potential. "I believe they can all be National Champions. That would be my goal for everyone. It's my goal for myself and for the team to win as a team. Whatever I can do to help those guys win, I'll do," he said. "Hopefully those guys are doing the right things and picking stuff up from me, and I try to pick stuff up from them, so it works both ways. Last year was last year, this is a new year." Another Cyclone senior, two-time All-American 141-pounder Nick Gallick, said the news of a head coaching change was tough at first, but that the senior-laden squad bought in early. "There's a different approach, but overall it's all wrestling, so it's the same. A couple things are a little different. He's real big on a technical standpoint. I think that's the biggest difference. Not allowing your technique to be flawed," Gallick said. "We've been on Coach Jackson's plan since preseason. So far it's working great and the whole team overall has improved greatly from where they were over the summer." Jackson hopes one change wrestling fans will notice in the Cyclones this season is the amount of points scored in matches. He doesn't want to see close matches when they shouldn't be and definitely expects his wrestlers to start matches quickly. "From a tactical standpoint, we want to be aggressive. We want to score points. We want to score points in that first period. That first three-minute period, we believe as a staff that it's unacceptable to go 0-0 in a three-minute period," Jackson said. "We're trying to force these guys to get their offense off, their attacks off. To give themselves an opportunity to score and take a commanding lead in the second period, as opposed to a 2-1 lead or worst case a 0-0 score. We're trying to dominate the match, instead of just win a match. If you've watched our athletes over the last couple years, I think we can be a little more dominant." Despite being a veteran team, with possibly six seniors and two juniors in the lineup, Jackson said there is room for improvement for everyone. "I don't think anyone in our room has reached their full potential. I think the majority of them have only scratched the surface," he said. "There's a few must-win positions that happen in a match that determine whether you're going to win those matches. I think that's one of the areas where we're going to improve the most in, is in those must-win position situations, when you have to perform that certain skill when it's called upon." One Cyclone who expects to see improvement up and down the lineup is junior two-time All-American Jon Reader at 165. The Cyclone missed out on a trip to the finals last year when he lost to eventual champ Jarrod King of Edinboro by 11 seconds of riding time in the semifinals. "The possibilities are endless. We have all the tools we need and we have some great coaches in here. We have all the tools to achieve greatness, we just need to put it together. We're on board with the whole coaching staff," he said. "Just have to compete in every match and go out there and dominate." As for himself, Reader said that loss to King serves as motivation coming into his junior campaign. "That will motivate anybody. That match was sad. But it drove me all summer. This season is going to be great. I'm so excited for it," he said. Something that has the team excited is the recent announcement that the 1,348 season tickets sold so far breaks the previous record of 1,313 set two years ago. "We're hoping that we get even more people to buy season tickets. We're very happy with where we're at now," Jackson said. "I've been tremendously blessed to be in this position right now and get this support from all of Cyclone Nation. It seems like everyone is in support of Cyclone wrestling. We definitely want to fill Hilton, especially at the right time." And while the Cyclones are looking forward to kicking off the season Nov. 12 in Ames against South Dakota State and big duals down the road against Iowa, Oklahoma State and the rest of the Big 12, Jackson knows a team is ultimately measured on how it does at the end of the season. Iowa State is searching for it's first NCAA team title since 1987, when the Cyclones halted Iowa's streak of nine consecutive titles. "We want to be great in March. We want to win every match, for sure.
Be we want to be at our very, very best in March," he said. Iowa State probable 2009-10 lineup
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