So I have a question. I know a couple guys who pay attention to wrestling and know more than I know but I don't really trust their opinions. They have said that it looks like KJ is a better wrestling teacher and motivator but has just been hamstrung by personnel. Is this true or completely idiotic?
I think that's very true. For one thing, look at his background, he's an Olympic Gold medalist whose prior job was coaching the national team for Freestyle. He has lots of experiencing bringing the best out of people. If you look at how guys like Varner and Zabriskie developed last year, and how Reader has done this year, you can see that he has the ability to take great guys and make them better. Keep in mind that Reader did not enter the season ranked number one.
As far as personnel, we graduated a very, very, very good senior class last year. And not only that, but most of the guys who would have been our redshirt freshman class this year aren't here because they either left with Cael or went another route because KJ became the coach pretty late in the recruiting process. Cael didn't actively screw ISU over like Brands did to Virginia Tech, but the timing of his departure still basically meant we had a lost year of recruiting. You see the effects of that this year when we have guys tossed into the lineup who would have been backups to that freshman class. Then you add into that the loss of Long (and Long's problems were off the mat, and to be honest he probably needed to get out of Iowa to get them fixed), and we're staring down a number of holes in our lineup. You see the effects of that this year really badly on nights like tonight.
Plus Drouin, a solid transfer at 141 who was brought in to help mitigate the loss of that recruiting class, is out with a concussion, and due to those defections our backup is redshirting and ISU almost never pulls a kid's redshirt.
This has put Jackson in a bad spot, but if you look at how he has developed the kids he does have, you see that most of them are overperforming where they were expected to be when the season started. The exceptions to that are Weatherman who has pretty much been a bust (only a freshman though, so hopefully he'll be a stud next year, but hasn't been able to break through this year, to early to write him off for good), Carr who has struggled with cutting down to 149 after being 157 the past two years (I wouldn't be suprised to see him at 157 on Sunday, with Mayfield at 149), and Ward who is coming off knee surgery over Christmas.
This is a down year, no question, but even in a down year we're still a top twenty team, and I honestly think we have a great shot of being top ten in March. Our lineup holes just make dual meets look much more lopsided than they actually are.
Basically, Jackson's first real recruiting class is redshirting right now. So we don't know if he'll be able to recruit us back to the top. But he's overachieving with the guys in the room this year.
I'd say the biggest black mark against him is the departure of Bono, but I assume Bono probably was hoping to have Jackson's job after Cael left, so I'm sure there was tension there due to that.
