Three track and field coaches in the Big 12 Conference — Iowa State’s Corey Ihmels, Nebraska’s Gary Pepin and Texas’ Bubba Thornton — each have their own mindset when it comes to the 2010 Big 12 Indoor Championships.

“I think it’s going to be a dogfight,” Ihmels said. “I think we are better than we are on paper and I think we are going to beat some teams that we probably shouldn’t beat.”

“You can make an analogy a little bit like a big battle: You are always trying to look at the rest of the teams and look where their strengths and weaknesses might be,” Pepin said.

“We are going to bring more than one or two athletes this weekend, and whether it’s Iowa State or Texas or Colorado or [Texas] A&M, we are coming to play,” Thornton said.

The 12 teams that make up of one of the nation’s top track and field conferences will converge in Ames for a two-day team competition beginning Friday at the Lied Recreation Athletic Center. This will be the fourth time since 1998 that Iowa State has hosted the Big 12 Indoor Championships.

The competition on both men’s and women’s sides will contain some of the best teams and athletes in the country.

On the men’s side, 10 of the 12 conference teams are ranked in the top 50 nationally, as are eight of the 12 on the women’s side. Although rankings are based on a team’s results at the national level, Texas A&M carries the highest rankings, with the No. 1 men’s and No. 2 women’s teams in the country.

Individually, three NCAA indoor national champions will compete this weekend along with two NCAA indoor national champion relay teams. Of the 34 combined track and field events, six of the nation’s top-ranked competitors will compete to help bolster their teams’ chances at a Big 12 Conference title.

ISU men’s and women’s teams under the direction of third-year head coach Ihmels have never finished higher than ninth place in the Big 12 conference. However, that might change this year, as the Cyclone women are currently ranked fourth of all Big 12 teams nationally.

Ihmels believes the men’s team, the lowest nationally ranked team from the Big 12, has a chance to move up.

“The conference meet is a funny thing; it never really goes to form,” Ihmels said.

Last season, when the men’s team finished ninth at the Big 12 meet, a few of the distance runners were close to securing a few more points that could have helped propel them into a higher place.

“We’ve got to turn the corner on that and really expect that we are going to make the finals,” Ihmels said.

Pepin, who, according to Thornton, is “the master of putting great indoor teams together,” has led the Huskers to more indoor championships — 14 — than any of the other Big 12 schools since the inception of the conference championship in 1997. Nebraska’s longest tenured head coach, the 30-year veteran coach, is excited for his No. 8-ranked men’s team and No. 14-ranked women’s teams to compete at one of the biggest stages in collegiate track and field.

“It’s going to be a great opportunity on both sides for our athletes to compete against some of the very best athletes in the NCAA,” Pepin said.

Nebraska has not won a Big 12 Indoor Championship since the men shared the conference title with Texas in 2007, something Pepin and his staff hope to change this weekend.

“Every year we start off the year with a goal of trying to win a championship both indoors and outdoors,” Pepin said. “The conference meets have always meant a lot to our school, so it’s something that our staff is looking at and aiming at all year.”

Texas is another of the 10 Big 12 teams ranked in the top 50 on both the men’s and women’s sides. The men’s track and field coach, Thornton, and the Longhorns will pursue their fifth consecutive Big 12 Indoor Championship on the men’s side, and the women will look for their first since 2006. In his fifteenth year at the helm, Thornton has realized the astounding depth of the conference.

“There are really great athletes at all of the universities within the Big 12,” Thornton said. “We’re [the Big 12 conference] a lot more than just two or three athletes.”

When it comes to the highest levels of competition, Thornton has overseen men’s teams in his fifteen years at Texas and as coach of the Beijing Olympic team that have had success at the national and international levels. Competition in the Winter Olympics wraps up this weekend, but for those looking for their fix of Olympic competition, Thornton says fans should look no further than the Big 12 Indoor Championships.

“[Fans] are going to get to see some things that you only get to see at an Olympic Games; that’s how special these [athletes] that are coming there are,” Thornton said.

The Big 12 Indoor Championships begin Friday at 10 a.m. with the beginning of events in the women’s pentathlon. Friday’s competition will primarily consist of preliminary races on the track until approximately 7:50 p.m., when the finals of the men’s and women’s 5,000-meter run and men’s and women’s distance medley relays will be run.

The women’s weight throw begins at 3 p.m., followed by the women’s pole vault and long jump, and the men’s weight throw, pole vault and long jump.