One game at a time.

Fans of ISU football heard this refrain countless times during the 2009 season from coach Paul Rhoads and his unified coaching staff. The phrase didn’t make for scintillating quotes, but the Cyclones won two more football games than they had the previous two seasons combined.

Bowl victories can make repetitive mantras exciting.

“I’m telling them the exact same things on the way to building a championship program,” Rhoads said. “There’s no timeline for that … expectations remain the same year in and year out. And that’s to win a bowl game in college football.”

Improvement and repetition are buzzwords again in 2010, and even with the returning starters and key players from last season’s Insight Bowl winning team, expectations remain unchanged.

Quarterback Austen Arnaud returns for his final season behind center, attempting to follow up a 2,015-yard passing season with a higher completion percentage and better knowledge of offensive coordinator Tom Herman’s system.

“I’ve been watching guys that run close to the same offense — Todd Reesing [of Kansas], Chase Daniel [from Missouri], Colt McCoy [of Texas] — guys that I’ve studied and they’ve been some of the best passers that college football has ever seen, and I just want to be in that same sense,” Arnaud said.

Senior running back Alexander Robinson finished 2009 as the second-leading rusher in the competitive Big 12, and the three-year starter will be running for his legacy in 2010 behind an established offensive line.

A stable of young runners will back up the Minneapolis native beside Arnaud in the spread, but the backfield is one of the few places where the Cyclones are locked in at the top of the depth chart.

The offensive line is largely consistent with last year’s roster, and the role of replacing All-Big 12 center Reggie Stephens will be filled by former guard Ben Lamaak, a player with 33 career starts.

Depth will also be an aid to this unit, and its success at keeping Arnaud off his backside could be duplicated.

But this is a Rhoads-coached team — improvement is the name of the game.

“I think that’s a low standard. We want to go out there and improve every year, and improve in all facets,” Lamaak said. “I think I’ve improved my leadership skills and my knowledge of football … I think it’s going to show and it’s going to be a lot of fun.”

A year ago, Herman said, “You don’t necessarily have to have a bunch of 4.3-[speed] guys out there running around to be successful.”

Even he couldn’t have predicted that the success of Robinson running and injuries to key targets Sedrick Johnson and Darius Reynolds would limit the team to 185 passing yards per game, which was ninth in the Big 12.

The receivers have improved, according to the second-year Cyclone coordinator, along with the rest of the offense, and it’s time for that production to equate to victories.

“There’s no doubt the receivers have improved, and we’re excited about that,” Herman said. “None of us on the offense are a finished product … but hopefully we’ll continue to get better.”

The offseason talk has been whether the fresh-faced ISU linebacking corps could uphold last year’s workload and intensity.

However, the entire defense is young, not just the linebackers. Rhoads and defensive coordinator Wally Burnham want to improve tackling constantly, and they feel the rest of the plan will fall into place.

“It’s better. It’s not there,” Rhoads said. “When I coach tackling, I want to be the best tackling football team in America. We’re not ahead of where we finished last season, because we have some players that haven’t had enough snaps out there, and been in position rep after rep after rep.”

A defensive line that would be classified as undersized when compared to its contemporaries will battle up front, but speed is the threat that the line and linebackers present to their opponents.

A speedy and reloaded secondary stars hard hitters Leonard Johnson and David Sims, but it will be needed to aid in run support and guide the young defense through one of the toughest schedules in the country.

“We’ve got better speed up front. We’ve got better speed at linebacker. We certainly have better speed in the secondary,” Burnham said. “They’re so young, they’re inexperienced. Even the guys that got snaps, we need them to be lots better than last year.”

The Iowa Hawkeyes, Utah Utes and Texas Longhorns give the Cyclones three opponents with six combined losses in 2009. Nebraska allowed 66 total points in the seven games following its defeat against Iowa State.

The rest of the Big 12 South is always difficult, Colorado is a conference road opponent for the last time, Northern Iowa hangs tough with in-state rivals, and the list goes on.

There are plenty of reasons why the Cyclones could let the schedule get the best of them.

“At some point, every freshman, every first-year junior college kid hits a wall somewhere. Mentally and physically, you hope its sooner rather than later,” Burnham said. “That’s always a concern, but we’ve to keep encouraging them and keep them at the task at hand.”

But Paul Rhoads proved to be a man of his word, providing Iowa State with a bowl victory in year one, as well as improving grade point averages across the board. His players will be expected to fall in line and live by his words now, too.

“They know the challenge is out there, and that by some people they’ve been ranked as having the toughest schedule in all of Division I football,” Rhoads said. “They embrace that. If they didn’t, we recruited the wrong kids. They’re excited about that challenge, and they’ll prepare to play those games whether it’s one in the top 10 or not in the top 25.”

The team spent last year underestimated and will spend this season acting like it’s being underestimated.

The best bet is that they’ll take it.

Follow along as the Iowa State Daily football staff goes position by position until gameday on Sept. 2. Tomorrow: Quarterbacks