It has been a roller coaster ride for the ISU men’s basketball team the last few seasons with a Big 12 title in the 2000-2001 regular season and last season’s record of 12-19.

This coming season should be another up and down ride, but with improvement over last year, ISU head coach Larry Eustachy is hoping to move quickly into the team’s transition period.

And it’s improvement that really matters to Eustachy. The rest — the records, the accomplishments — mean nothing to Eustachy, who not only doesn’t like to look at the past, but who also doesn’t worry about what takes place in the win and loss columns.

“The measuring stick is always going to be wins and losses for the media, for the fans, for my mom and for my wife,” Eustachy said. “We really don’t want to look back, we want to look forward. But we also can learn from the past whether it was a championship year or a team that really struggled to win games but tried very very hard.”

This year’s team resembles last year’s slightly, with only Tyray Pearson, Ricky Morgan and Shane Power missing. Pearson graduated, Morgan is taking a break from basketball and Power transferred to Mississippi State.

“I think we’re a better team when guys leave that don’t want to be in this program or buy into this program,” Eustachy said about Power. “So I look at it as a positive.”

Some key newcomers for this year’s squad include freshman guard/forward Adam Haluska, junior college transfer big man Jackson Vroman and point guard Tim Barnes, also a junior college transfer.

“I like Jackson [Vroman],” Eustachy said. “He works as hard as anybody I’ve had, for the first eight days of practice anyway. I like these guys. They’re good guys, solid citizens.”

Eustachy has also noticed an early chemistry between the players, which can be nothing but helpful as the year progresses.

“I like our chances a lot. We’re really teamed together right now,” junior Jake Sullivan said. “We’re real close as a team, kind of united and I think that’s the best part. I think that is going to get us farther than anything.”

With Vroman around to help out senior Omar Bynum and sophomore Jared Homan in the post, the mystery of the point guard position is still the hot topic, as it was most of last year.

“Show me a good team, and they’ve got a great point guard,” Eustachy said. “Stability at point guard is probably the key to this team, and I think there is a lot of candidates for it.”

Eustachy said he likes the quickness and toughness of Barnes, as well as Sullivan’s improvement at the position.

“I think Haluska can play a one or a two down the road,” Eustachy said. “Jake can do it and handle it much better this year, and of course Barnes is our best talent at it.”

So with the positions naturally working themselves out, Eustachy has focused on the mental and physical toughness of the team, noting that this is where he wants to see the most improvement.

“What’s going to determine our season or not is how tough our team becomes as a whole and individually,” Eustachy said. “Our team has to really accelerate our toughness process and that’s coaching. We have to put them in very tough situations in practice and break them down and build them back up again, that’s what coaching is.”

Eustachy said the team has worked very hard on the weights, and that it is a strong team physically from where it was a year ago.

“Mentally, we have to match our physical strength and I think we can have some upsets and beat some teams people say we’re not supposed to beat,” Eustachy said.

In looking at the coming season, one of the things that has Eustachy already marking the calendar is how tough the Big 12 schedule begins for the team.

“We see what Dan [McCarney] is going through in football with his stretch of the schedule and how difficult it is,” Eustachy said. “I think ours is a mock of it, very similar.”

Starting with Kansas at home January 6, the Cyclones then hit the road for a game at Texas, face Oklahoma at home, head to Missouri, see Nebraska back at home and then head down to Oklahoma State.

“I challenge when somebody has had a rougher ride since this conference has been formed,” Eustachy said. “If a computer spit that out I’d like to know the computer that chucked that thing out. I think it’s going to be very difficult conference play for us.”

Eustachy has circled those six games as an important growing and improving period for the season.

“Whether we win or lose, we have to come out better for it, a stronger team and a better executing team and move ahead,” Eustachy said. “We’ve got to weather the storm and we will, we always have, we’ll hold together.”

The non-conference schedule won’t be the challenge that the conference season will bring, and Eustachy is hoping to use that to build confidence on the team.

“That’s what we need more than anything is to know we can play quality basketball that gives us a chance in our openers,” Eustachy said. “We set it up where this young team can hopefully have some success early and gain confidence.”

As far as where the team will finish in the Big 12, Eustachy doesn’t have much of a prediction, but knows what needs to happen for them to garner the success they are after.

“Same old story — zero margin for error. Injuries, fouling,” Eustachy said. “We’re going to have to play just right and get games close and then we’re going to have to win those games, which we were unable to do last year.”

Eustachy is comfortable with his team at this point, but is waiting for harder tests to come along before he can really figure what he has on his hands.

“I won’t find out about guys, really find out about them, until it becomes very difficult and adverse,” Eustachy said. “A lot of early morning practices, tough losses and direct half-time speeches. That’s when you find out about where someone really is.”

If the team were to take the floor tonight, Eustachy said you might expect to see Barnes, Sullivan, junior Marcus Jefferson or Haluska, Vroman and Homan.

But who is starting what position is the least of anyone’s worries.

“We’re just worried about everyone staying together as a team and winning games together,” Sullivan said.