All things come to an end, but before they do, head coach Dave Grant has one more season with the NIU wrestling team.

The Huskies begin their 2010-2011 season tonight at 7 p.m. with their annual Wrestle-Offs, which will determine the starters for the start of the year at each weight class.

Grant, in his 15th and final season at NIU, is excited for this year and has high hopes.

“I think we’ve trained about as hard as we’ve trained in the last couple years,” Grant said. “This is about the best group we’ve had training-wise. I feel pretty confident in these guys. Obviously, as you go through a season you’ve got to get better as you go and we’ve got a long journey to undertake.”

In 2009-2010, the Huskies finished 9-10 with a 1-4 record in the MAC during the regular season and fifth in the postseason tournament.

NIU returns a core of seniors in Vince Castillo, Tristen DeShazer, Bryan Deutsch, Dakota Greenhaw and Pat McLemore, but out of its 29-man roster, 17 are freshmen.

Although it may seem unbalanced on paper, this squad is confident with all wrestlers no matter what year they are.

“A lot of these older guys in the program weren’t fortunate enough to have guys like these young guys have,” Grant said. “They have an opportunity to wrestle a lot of upperclassmen and get a lot of experience. I remember when I was in college a senior grabbing me, and just pretty much tortured me and I got a lot better. I don’t think I would have had as much success in college.”

The brightest spot for NIU last season came as Deutsch advanced to his second straight NCAA tournament after a second place finish in the conference tournament.

“I haven’t really missed a step this offseason,” Deutsch said. “I haven’t gone backwards, and I think I’ve actually taken a few steps forward in refining various aspects of my wrestling repertoire. There’s no real offseason when you’re a Division I athlete.”

Deutsch lost both of his matches in last year’s NCAA’s and is aiming even higher for his final season.

“I would like to place in the top eight at NCAA’s so I can be called an All-American,” Deutsch said. The ultimate goal would be to win, but I wouldn’t be too disappointed if I was an All-American.”

The preseason polls haven’t quite agreed with the Huskies, but that’s where the aspect of surprise factors into play.

“I think we’re a real strong team this year,” Deutsch said. “Obviously, a lot stronger than a lot of people in the preseason polls are figuring. I think there’s a lot of guys that are going to surprise quite a few people within the conference and probably nationally.”

Even with all the high expectations from NIU, Grant and his squad aren’t looking too far ahead and know how important the next few weeks are.

“We want to get guys to nationals and have these guys do something nationally,” Grant said. “It all starts with these tournaments that we go to early in the season to build your name as a wrestler.”