University of Minnesota Athletics
TOP WRESTLING COACHES PREVIEW 2001 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS
3/14/2001 12:00:00 AM | Athletics
J Robinson (Minnesota), John Smith (Oklahoma State), Jim Zalesky (Iowa), Mark Johnson (Illinois), Bobby Douglas (Iowa State) and Jack Spates (Oklahoma) discussed the upcoming national tournament and several other significant issues in wrestling.
Following are selected quotes from the coaches' press conference.
J Robinson - "We're coming off a good year. Our team has grown a lot from last year. Our younger guys have really stepped up and proved that they can wrestle well consistently. It's hard to tell what is more important to winning this year's team title - top individual performances or team balance. I know that we haven't hit our best yet as a team and that, for us to win, we need balance from top to bottom. But we're excited to be here. It's always exciting to be at Iowa for a big wrestling event like this."
"Our only way to combat Iowa's four top individuals is for us to have 10 All-Americans. When planning for this year, we knew that we needed to have balance for our team to do well."
John Smith - "We had a good year. A lot of our guys have stepped up to put us in the position we are today - to challenge for a national championship. We're really excited about wrestling in this. We're going to need to have all 10 guys really compete for us to do well."
Jim Zalesky - "As a team, we're not as balanced as we have been in the past. We have the four guys that have the ability to win individual titles, but we have to have all eight of our guys score points. We need to have some guys wrestle above their seeds."
"We need to have finalists. We can't afford to have a guy not wrestle like he is capable. We need to wrestle consistently every round. Whoever wrestles the best as a team will win the championship."
