The Cyclone Family gives Jiri Hubalek hope.

Hubalek, a senior forward from Prague, Czech Republic, has felt the team come together in a way he thinks will lead them to a better record than their 15-16, 6-10 Big 12 Conference records in 2006-07.

“This team is very close together, we’re like a Cyclone family, you know, brothers to each other,” Hubalek said. “We’ve bonded tremendously. Everybody on the team knows what the goal is, and that is to make the Cyclones, as a team, successful.”

Coach Greg McDermott said he saw a difference between this year’s team and last year’s team beginning this past summer.

“In general, I couldn’t be more pleased with the attitude of this particular team,” McDermott said. “There was a chemistry that developed over the summer when the guys were here on campus together that I hadn’t seen a year ago, and that was encouraging, from our coaching staff’s standpoint.”

That’s not to say Iowa State hasn’t faced adversity already. Guard Dodie Dunson transferred in May, and leading scorer Mike Taylor was dismissed from the team in July, making the point guard position a large question mark.

To make matters worse, Hubalek is questionable for the first few weeks of the season while recovering from a foot injury, and freshman Lucca Staiger was declared ineligible by the NCAA for playing on a club team in Germany.

McDermott said the team won’t let adversity bring it down.

“We’ve had some unfortunate things that have happened – obviously Lucca’s deal, the multitude of injuries we’ve had that have kept people out of practice – that’s part of coaching,” McDermott said.

“To give a golf analogy, a friend of mine told me one time ‘the ball is in the water, bounced off a tree and went into the water. What are you going to do?’ You’ve got a choice – triple bogey or you can try to salvage the best you can out of this particular hole, and that’s what we’re going to do.”

Last year, Iowa State was able to start the conference season 2-0 and took No. 6 Kansas to overtime before losing, 68-64 – the beginning of a five-game losing streak. The Cyclones recovered to win four more conference games and had a shot at sixth place in the conference before losing to NCAA Tournament-bound Texas Tech, 63-61.

This year’s team, despite losing players in the off-season, should still have depth at every position. McDermott said competition at every position opens up the possibility to rotate players in and out of the game, and also leaves question marks as to who will see the most playing time.

Three positions that are not question marks are the three leaders of the team in Hubalek, senior forward Rahshon Clark and sophomore forward Wesley Johnson, who will start the season at shooting guard.

“This year is very different from last year,” Johnson said. “We’ve got a lot more talent, and for me and Rahshon and Jiri it’s our second year under coach, and we’ve got to tell the new guys coming in what to expect, so they know what coach wants from them.”

Iowa State was picked to finish 11th in the Big 12 in the preseason coaches’ poll. Clark said the team faced the same situation last year, but defied expectations.

“They have us picked 11th in the Big 12, which they did last year, and we won games that people didn’t think we would win,” Clark said. “We just want to go out there and show people the same way we did last year, that we are a team that can go out there and play basketball, and I think we’ll win a lot of games.”

Hubalek, who McDermott called the most improved player on the team, said the preseason expectations don’t mean anything to him. The family atmosphere will lead the Cyclones to greater heights than last season, he said.

“The goal is definitely to try to do a lot better than not even what people thought we could, but what we did last year,” Hubalek said. “Coach McDermott has done a great job trying to make us the best basketball team he possibly can, so I think we’re going to do great things this year.

“I think we’re going to be a better basketball team than last year.”