As if dropping its first six dual meets of the season was not enough for the ISU wrestling team, it is set to face another challenge Friday.

The No. 19 Cyclones (0-6, 0-2 Big 12) will travel to Minneapolis to face No. 4 Minnesota at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Williams Arena.

All 10 wrestlers in the starting lineup for the Golden Gophers (3-2, 1-0 Big Ten) are ranked nationally, which may prove to be the toughest challenge of the season yet for the Cyclones.

“They’re a strong team,” said ISU coach Kevin Jackson. “They’re very, very capable, tough kids who are sound technically. J. Robinson does a great job with them. They could easily be [ranked] anywhere from [No.] 1 to [No.] 4 [as a team].”

The contest against the Golden Gophers will feature another match against an opponent ranked in the top 10 for ISU 125-pounder Ryak Finch.

Finch, a redshirt freshman from Safford, Ariz., lost his last two matches leading into another match with a top-ranked opponent, Zach Sanders. However, Finch is not fretting over his tough competition this early in his career.

“It’s actually a good thing,” Finch said. “Wrestling [Iowa’s] Matt McDonough, wrestling [Oklahoma’s Jarrod] Patterson, wrestling Zach Sanders — he’s the No. 1 guy now — so I think wrestling guys like that can only make me better. Especially this early in my career, this early in the season, it’s just going to make it easy for me at the NCAAs.”

Despite his recent losses, Finch has maintained his No. 10 ranking in InterMat’s weekly top 20 poll.

Senior Andrew Sorenson will be vying for a better bout after a close 4-3 victory against Iowa’s Mike Evans on Sunday in the Cyclones’ 27-9 loss to their in-state rival.

The fifth-ranked 165-pounder was noticeably displeased with his performance as he was unable to score bonus points in the Cyclones’ first win of the dual.

“I feel like I want to get bonus points all the time and sometimes that hinders me,” Sorenson said after the dual Sunday. “But coaches do a good job of coming back and telling me, ‘Get the win first, focus on bonus points later.'”

Still, Jackson said Sorenson’s struggles were not all negative.

“Any time you wrestle another ranked wrestler, it’s going to be a competitive match,” Jackson said. “That guy’s ranked for a reason. But we expect [Sorenson] to go out there and perform better than he did against Iowa.

“Obviously he recognized he didn’t wrestle his best match, but that shows the signs of a champion to still win and not have your best match.”

Sorenson will face the Gophers’ Cody Yohn, who is currently ranked No. 8.

Another matchup in which the Cyclones are favored is at 174 pounds, where No. 7 Chris Spangler will square off against No. 10 Logan Storley.

Spangler had been having troubles with his conditioning after coming back from offseason recovery from surgery, but his upset of No. 6 Ethen Lofthouse against Iowa was a sign of good things to come from him.

“We expect Chris to continue to improve even more from his performance on Sunday,” Jackson said. “He wrestled a complete match, his first complete match that he’s wrestled all year. So the expectations are for him to continue to build on that.”

The dual is set to begin at 7:30 p.m. Friday night in Minneapolis.