Iowa State wrestling coach Kevin Jackson on future: Jamie Pollard has ‘a job to do’

AMES - In the wake of a trying dual-meet season and Iowa State athletics director Jamie Pollard's recent comments, wrestling coach Kevin Jackson spoke about his future.

The Cyclones (1-7, 1-3) fell at South Dakota State and North Dakota State to begin the season, and are fresh off a 20-12 home loss to Northern Iowa - the first UNI win in Hilton Coliseum since 2003.

Last Tuesday, Pollard was asked about the state of the wrestling program on Iowa State's call-in show.

'Our wrestling program is funded as well as any in the country so it's not for a lack of resources and it's not for a lack of effort,” Pollard said. 'Coach Jackson and his wrestling staff and the wrestlers want to win as much as anybody else, but at the same time the others on the other side of the mat want to win too.

'We need to get better, and it hasn't been where we like it to be. The coaches know that and the wrestlers know that. In the end, if that doesn't change, then we'll have to get somebody else another shot at it. But right now Coach Jackson is our coach and we're behind him 100 percent to see where we end up.”

Jackson said after the loss to UNI he heard some of the comments Pollard made, but recently the two had a lengthy conversation about the direction of the program.

'It was a good conversation. I mean, Jamie's got a job to do,” Jackson said Monday. 'He's got a job to do and obviously when he has a team that's not competing well dual-meet wise, there are some concerns there.

'Our program's expectations are a lot higher than that. He made me pretty aware that those are his thoughts.”

Jackson, who is in his eighth season, owns a 68-52 dual-meet record. He's coached nine individual Big 12 champions and four individual NCAA champions.

After a third-place team finish at the NCAA championships in 2010, Iowa State hasn't finished higher than 11th in Jackson's tenure and was as low as 35th in 2012.

The 2016 recruiting class was ranked No. 3 in the country by InterMat behind North Carolina State and Penn State, but the Cyclones haven't been able to develop their recruits as they hoped and have just one individual national champion since 2011 - Kyven Gadson in 2015.

Iowa State hosts Oklahoma (6-4, 1-1) on Friday at 6:30 p.m. and No. 1 Oklahoma State (8-0, 2-0) on Sunday at 2 p.m.

'Regardless of our dual-meet situation and not performing well in duals, I know we have guys that are capable of being national champions and All-Americans when we get to championship season,” Jackson said. 'We just keep grinding and focused on what the mission is and that's getting guys ready for Oklahoma and then we'll have Oklahoma State on Sunday.”

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