The second-ranked Iowa State wrestling team headed to Minneapolis, Minn., coming off a second-place showing at the Midlands Championships in late December. The Cyclones were bound and determined to keep their streak of success going, but the fifth-ranked Minnesota Gophers gave Iowa State a run for their money.

    “Overall, the effort was there,” head coach Kevin Jackson said in a press release. “We’ve still got some areas we need to improve on. We’ve got some guys that need to get our tactical philosophy and once we’ve got that going we’re going to be fine.”

    The dual started off with senior Duke Burk, ranked 11th at 174 pounds, getting beaten by the Gophers’ Scott Glasser by a decision of 8-2, giving the Gophers a glimpse of what victory over the second-ranked Cyclones may look like.

    The Cyclones retaliated with back-to-back wins by sophomore Jerome Ward (184) and senior Jake Varner (197). Varner, the reigning national champion at 197 pounds, recorded his sixth pin of the season by pinning Sonny Yohn with a fall time of 6:59, giving the Cyclones a much-needed six points tallied on the team’s score.

    “Jake Varner did what the top guy in the country is supposed to do,” Jackson said. “He kept wrestling until the end and that was the difference in the dual.”

    Varner had already led by a score of 8-0 with ten seconds left to go in the match, but managed to go the extra mile to score three extra points for his team.

    Redshirt freshman Eric Thompson, who filled in for senior David Zabriskie, lost to tenth-ranked Ben Berhow by a close decision of 6-4.

    “Zabriskie was just a little nicked up from the Midlands, so we wanted to give him a chance to not re-injure his injury,” Jackson said. “So we did give him some time off.”

    With a slim lead of 9-6 after four matches, redshirt freshman Andrew Long gave the Cyclones some breathing room by defeating the Gophers’ Zach Sanders, 8-4. Long’s decision over the third-ranked 125-pounder was pivotal in giving the Cyclones an advantage. Long was impressed after his performance, not letting Sanders score an offensive point despite being the favorite in the match.

    “This was a good win for me,” Long said of his victory. “I knew (Sanders) had a good gas tank. It was good to push through that and get him tired. I kept wrestling the whole match. There were definitely some good scrambles in the match, but I felt strong in all of the positions.”

    At his press conference on Jan. 4, coach Jackson expressed how impressed he was with Long’s domination over the favored opponent to give the Cyclones the advantage.

    “I truly believe because of the match at Midlands he had with (Iowa’s Matt) McDonough, where we have a two-point lead with 30 seconds left and we end up getting taken down to go into overtime, helped him,” Jackson said. “You always get better from losses than wins. He did the things we trained to do in that situation to be able to pull that win out (against Sanders). It was a huge win because if they would have won that match, as things sit now, it would have been a tie dual. That turned out to be a big win for him and a big win for the team.”

    Senior Nick Fanthorpe, who is ranked fifth at 133 pounds, fell to second-ranked Jayson Ness by a decision of 6-1. Fanthorpe has yet to beat Ness, despite having wrestled him three times.

    Filling in for the injured Nick Gallick, who has been upgraded to day-to-day with his thigh bruise he sustained earlier in the season, Dalton Jensen came in with hopes of repeating his last dual performance where he pinned Northern Iowa’s Alec Hoffman with a fall time of 1:17. However, things didn’t go quite as smoothly for Jensen, as the sophomore from Missouri Valley fell to sixth-ranked Mike Thorn by a major decision of 11-3.

    Mitch Mueller headed into his match after the Gophers scored seven points to take the lead in the dual, 13-12. Mueller, a senior from Iowa City, didn’t disappoint as he defeated David Zilverberg by a decision of 6-3 in the 149-pound match to regain the lead for the Cyclones. Zilverberg earned all three of his points through escapes.

    One match later, ISU’s Andrew Sorenson put a nail in the coffin for the Gophers after beating Luke Mellmer by a major decision of 12-0. Sorenson’s dominance was reflected by his recording of two three-point nearfalls at two different points in the match.

    “Midlands and Minnesota have convinced me that we’re right on track, we’re going to be wrestling our best in March,” Jackson said in his press conference on Jan. 4. “We’re coming real close to making the right connections and doing some of the things we’ve been training them to do. Not all our guys are making those same connections, but the majority are. The guys that are truly in the hunt for a national title are making those connections.”

    The Cyclones return to Cedar Falls to compete in the NWCA/Cliff Keen National Duals on Jan. 9/10.

IOWA STATE 19, MINNESOTA 16

174 pounds – Scott Glasser (UM) dec. No. 11 Duke Burk (ISU), 8-2

184 pounds – No. 12 Jerome Ward (ISU) dec. Kaleb Young (UM), 4-0

197 pounds – No. 1 Jake Varner (ISU) pinned Sonny Yohn (UM), 6:59

HWT – No. 10 Ben Berhow (UM) dec. Eric Thompson (ISU), 6-4

125 pounds – No. 13 Andrew Long (ISU) dec. No. 3 Zach Sanders (UM), 8-4

133 pounds – No. 2 Jayson Ness (UM) dec. No. 5 Nick Fanthorpe (ISU), 6-1

141 pounds – No. 6 Mike Thorn (UM) major dec. Dalton Jensen (ISU), 11-3

149 pounds – No. 14 Mitch Mueller (ISU) dec. David Zilverberg (UM), 6-3

157 pounds – Andrew Sorenson (ISU) major dec. Luke Mellmer (UM), 12-0

165 pounds – No. 4 Dustin Schlatter (UM) dec. No. 3 Jon Reader (ISU), 3-2