ISU wrestling coach Cael Sanderson said there is to be a lesson to be learned from this March.

“Nobody’s unbeatable,” Sanderson said. “We saw that this year. If we would have had another All-American or two, we would have been the national champions.”

Minnesota held off Iowa State to win the NCAA Tournament two weekends ago and are the favorites to repeat next season. The Golden Gophers will return nine of 10 starters, including six All-Americans.

Meanwhile, the Cyclones graduate four members of this year’s team, including three All-Americans, but have regained expectations of excellence after a breakout season that included the school’s first Big 12 title in 20 years.

Longshots to win or even contend for the NCAA Tournament this year, the Cyclones finished a close second a week-and-a-half ago, just 9.5 points behind the Golden Gophers.

Under the leadership of Sanderson in his first year, a mostly young team outperformed expectations and gave the program momentum for moving into the future.

Before this season, Iowa State hadn’t placed in the top five since 2002. Sanderson said the success of this will manifest itself in recruiting and fan support.

“We continued to improve throughout the year, and that says a lot about the coaching staff and the kids in the program,” said Sanderson, who won both Big 12 and national coach of the year honors this season. “So that shows recruits, that shows fans that we are doing things correctly, which is important to us. So I mean it should just be the start of something big. We want to keep building this program, build the fanbase where we can win a couple national championships.”

Iowa State had a lead going into the final day of this year’s NCAA Tournament, but Minnesota had more matches left to wrestle.

The Cyclones placed three wrestlers in the finals, and with three wins would have had a chance at winning the title. They went 1-for-3 in the championship round, but Sanderson said the tournament was decided in earlier rounds.

“We knew we had a real good chance, but really, it’s a team effort,” he said. “And we needed some points, we needed a couple more guys to be All-Americans probably to really contend for the title.”

He said the team’s depth will ease the process of filling holes left by graduation, which include the 157-, 165-, 174- and 197-pound weight classes.

“We’ve got some freshmen stepping up that are real tough, so we’ve got a lot of options at 157 through 125,” Sanderson said. “At 74, we’ll have Mitch Artist, Todd Becker, [2005 starter David] Bertolino is back for another year. At 84, [NCAA runner-up Jake] Varner is back – 97, [2005 starter] Joe Curran is back, he has experience.

“So it’s not that we don’t have experience in those weight classes, and those guys have made a lot of improvements, but it’s just something where we’ve got to keep moving forward, and get them ready to contend for All-American status.”