A dumbfounded group of reporters sat in front of Cael Sanderson after his post-meet press conference after last year’s 24-6 loss to Iowa.

“Did anyone get a picture of [then-assistant coach Dan] Gable flipping me off?” the first-year coach asked when walking into the room.

The first match in the Iowa-Iowa State wrestling dual between Sanderson and new Hawkeye coach Tom Brands ended in controversy when 165-pounder Mark Perry scored a questionable takedown in a 6-4 overtime win over Cyclone Travis Paulson.

After the wrestling match, a shouting match broke out between the two coaching staffs. As captured on videotape before the end of Perry’s win, Gable – a former two-time NCAA champion at Iowa State – made an obscene gesture toward the ISU bench, which was unseen by most of the 13,732 in attendance.

Sanderson was again questioned about the incident in his Monday press conference, and said it is just an indication of the intensity of the rivalry. The soon-to-be-first-ranked ISU wrestling team will wrestle third-ranked Iowa in Hilton Coliseum on Sunday.

“It didn’t change my opinion of him,” Sanderson said. “I’m not too worried about him and what he is doing. I didn’t do a great job in that press conference last year. I was pretty frustrated, just with everything, and I didn’t do as good of a job as I could have done [with the press conference].”

Referring to Gable’s gesture, Sanderson said he didn’t want “get back into that stuff” again. Few people saw the incident at first, but it was captured on video and has been viewed more than 29,000 times on YouTube.

After a one-year return to coaching from his retirement, Gable stepped down as Brands’ assistant coach in September.

“It was frustrating last year. We didn’t get a chance to see them head-to-head again, and so this is our chance, I mean, we saw ’em, but it wasn’t like us dualing them, and even though we beat them in everything we saw them at again – I mean, they were competing to get in the top 10 [at the NCAA Tournament], we were competing for the national championship. Still even all through the summer, you hear about that dual, so this is a big dual for us,” Sanderson said. “We want to get out there and perform.”

Iowa State lost six matches decided by 2 points or less in last season’s dual.

Against Minnesota last Sunday, the Cyclones won three close matches by relatively very small margins.

No. 1 ranked sophomore Jake Varner (184) was one of two Cyclones to win his match against Iowa last year.

He said – like the 18-13 win over the Golden Gophers – the rivalry dual can set the tone for the rest of the season even though it didn’t last season.

“After beating Minnesota, we are a different team than we were last year, that obviously showed,” Varner said. “Us placing second and Iowa just barely cracking the top 10 [the Hawkeyes finished in eighth last season], it showed that we did better. We’re going to come out and be ready to wrestle.”