Jim Zalesky Quotations

We're not going to lose because we're not in shape; we're not going to lose because we didn't work hard enough. Those are things we can control, and I'm going to expect my team to be in great shape.

We've got guys in the room we feel can step up next year and bring us back up.

We'll see where he is at this weekend. It's one of those things where he hit it and keeps hitting it, so you've got to give it some rest.

We didn't take ourselves out of it. We've got to keep the individuals on top winning, and the guys on the bottom have got to come back and win and stay in the tournament. We've got to knock some guys off. If we wrestle to our seed, we're not going to do much.

One thing I see he has more this year more than anything is confidence. He's gotten some big wins and that gives you confidence.

He was trying to pull to get out of position and he had his leg locked out straight. Konrad dropped down and shot like a low single. All of the weight came on the knee. It was one of those things where the ankle got caught in the mat and there was nothing you could do.

He was thinking too much and not wrestling. For Paul to be successful, he needs to force his style on the guy and come out aggressive. He knows that. It's a very deep class, but Paul could surprise some people.

We talked about winning the tough matches, winning the close matches. I don't feel like we came out and wrestled hard early last weekend. We have got to be ready to go from the start. With (174?pounder Mark) Perry out, some other guys are going to have to pick it up. Somebody else is going to have to step up and pull us up. We need to win some matches we are not favored to win.

We thought we had them beat last year when we got way ahead and then they came back and beat us. We have got to be ready to wrestle. We have got to come out aggressively.

Oregon State has a great tradition. You've got the backing of the administration, which is key. You've also got good Oregon high school wrestling, there's a good base there.

Mark is healthy and ready to go. You can just tell from looking at him how much he wants to win the Big Tens. We think he should. He was close to doing it last year, and I think that's motivation for him this season.

Michael has prepared as the starter, so we're fine in that regard. We expect the same from him that we do from everyone.

We have to win the tough ones to win the dual. Our guys did a good job. You have to get on a roll to get the crowd out of it and get some momentum.

We needed that kind of competition. Even though we got beat, I thought we fought hard.

We had a chance to beat (Minnesota) and the matches like at 141, 149, 157 were all pretty tough matches and we lost them all. We just weren't good enough that day to beat them.

When you have guys that don't wrestle, it's hard to make it exciting. Overall, I thought we wrestled well.

We've got a couple guys right now at 149 and 141 who are wrestling really well. But we've had a couple guys banged up and a few others who regressed a little during the season. We've been fixing things this week and getting everyone prepared for the Big Tens. This has been our goal all season, and we feel that if we wrestle like we should that we could win.

We just lost some close matches. We need to get those things turned around for us. Against Michigan State, we didn't come out and wrestle aggressively. We have got to learn to turn things around. Things don't always go your way.

Depending on what he does, we'll go from there.

Anybody who's in a backup situation has always got to be prepared to step in.

There were at least four matches on paper (141, 149, 157 and 184) that could go either way. Minnesota won all of them. They won the close matches and that was the key.

It's one of those things where we don't want to push it right now. He really can't do a lot without getting hurt.

That's probably what cost us the dual more than anything.

Every time we've gone up there, it's always been a good environment.

The intensity's got to pick up a little more and you've got to have all-out effort in every position. Right now, we're getting reversed here and there, we're getting rode here and there, and those kinds of things cost you big matches. You can't let those things happen.

I'm not sure when he's going to be in the lineup. We've got to have everybody for the Big Tens, that's where we've really got to be ready.

If the pace isn't going your way, you've got to change the pace of the match and make it your match. What's been happening sometimes when it's been a tough match is one's not doing the offense. To me, you've got to do the offense to win.

Illinois has a good team. For us to win, we have got to win those matches.

Being home is always good. We haven't been home in awhile. We've had a lot of competition in the last few weeks with the National Duals and then the conference season, and it will be nice to be back home in front of our fans.

The guys rebounded well from that first loss last weekend. We wrestled well after that. We just got caught a couple times in pins. We've got to turn some of those things around.

You want to win these duals, but we realize if we don't, we still have time to get better. The emphasis we're putting on is more the Big Tens and NCAA.

It doesn't matter if it's fair, that's just the reality of it.

Anybody can win the matches you can dominate, but it's the tough matches that are going to make the difference.