Premium ContentMouse over Home then click on Premium Content for information.LINCOLN — His young team has already exceeded every college wrestling pundit's prediction and expectation this year. So Nebraska coach Mark Manning isn't about to get starry-eyed now.
Not even with No. 2 Iowa and its 23 national championships coming to Lincoln for a 7 p.m dual with the No. 7 Huskers at NU Coliseum.
Yes, the Hawkeyes were a dynasty under coach Dan Gable — 15 national crowns from 1978 to '97, including nine in a row — and are one now under head coach Tom Brands, who's won three in his five years at Iowa.
"But our 141-pounder (fearless, aggressive freshman Jake Sueflohn) isn't wrestling Tom Brands," Manning said this week. "He's not wrestling Dan Gable. He's not wrestling the tradition. He's just wrestling the guy out in front of him. They don't have to do anything different than they've been doing before."
It served the 10-0 Huskers well when they weren't ranked to start the year, Manning said, and in an 18-16 upset of Ohio State last Friday.
The crowd at the Coliseum is likely to be different, though. Manning expects Iowa — which packed 15,400 into Carver-Hawkeye Arena for a dual with Oklahoma State last week — to bring its share of fans from the western part of the state.
Sioux City. Council Bluffs. Glenwood. Sheldon, the hometown of Tom and Terry Brands, the twins who coach the Hawkeyes and won a combined five individual national titles as wrestlers in the early 1990s.
Associate head coach Terry Brands coached briefly on Manning's staff at NU. The families still trade Christmas cards.
"I really like them," Manning said. "They make (NU football coach) Bo Pelini look mellow. But I love their fiery attitude."
It's not a show, Tom Brands said in a phone interview.
"It's who we are," he said. "It's how we were raised. This isn't something you get a participation ribbon for."
He's that dialed in to every match. Because of its history, Iowa has a target on its back for every match.
And although wrestling success is ultimately measured by points in the NCAA championships — and the Hawkeyes do well there — Brands doesn't care. He wants the dual wins. He reached 100 of them in just his 107th dual as Iowa's head coach. Gable made it in 105.
"It doesn't wear me out," Brands said. "It's welcome. We don't want it every other year. We try to win every time out, and I probably get criticized for that. We get up for every team. We're trying to seize the moment all the time."
Iowa had an 84-dual unbeaten streak because of it, and the Hawkeyes hoped to break the NCAA record last Saturday against Oklahoma State, which also had an 84-dual unbeaten streak in the 1960s. The Cowboys and Hawkeyes technically tied at 16 — each winning five of the 10 weight classes — but Oklahoma State won 17-16 on a tiebreaker of points scored in all 10 matches.
The streak starts over. And Oklahoma State took over the No. 1 spot in the NWCA coaches poll for one week although the Hawkeyes' second-ranked Derek St. John didn't wrestle at 157 pounds because of an injury.
"We had our chances," Brands said.
Nebraska hopes to take its shot Friday. An Iowa native, Eagle Grove's Ridge Kiley, will wrestle at 133 pounds for the Huskers. NU 184-pounder Josh Ihnen — a native of Sheldon himself — grew up on a steady dose of Hawkeye wrestling, attending the Brands' hometown camps as a kid.
"There really was no other team than Iowa wrestling," Ihnen said.
But maturity altered that perspective. The Hawkeyes still have a grip on college wrestling, but it's not quite the headlock Gable enjoyed in his heyday. The Hawkeyes went through a dry spell in the early 2000s and are not a runaway favorite to win the national title in 2012.
"It's just another team," Ihnen said. "It's just another opponent. You can't be intimidated by anybody at this level. Because you're going to face the best guys — and you have to be ready for that."
Iowa's blue-collar style, Ihnen said, resembles Nebraska's. Grinders.
Said Manning: "They're going to battle to the end. And we like that. We wrestle that style. It's going to be a hard-fought match."
» NOTES: A 5 p.m. high school dual between Kearney and Madison will precede NU's match on Friday. ... The Huskers have a "Red Out" promotion for the event. ... The match will be televised on a two-hour delay by the Big Ten Network. ... Brands said he'd bring St. John on the trip to Lincoln but wasn't sure that he'd wrestle. ... Manning said matches at 141, 149, 157, 174 and 197 pounds could be swing matches in determining the dual's winner. ... Husker assistant Tony Ersland was a letterwinner at Iowa from 1994 to '97, the final years of Gable's career.
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