For Stanford wrestling, in this crucial year for the program, it all comes down to this weekend’s Pacific 10 Conference Championships.

The Pac-10 tournament, scheduled to open Sunday in Eugene, Ore., is the chief factor in determining which wrestlers will have the chance to compete for All-American honors and national championships at the NCAA Championships in St. Louis, Mo., March 20-22. But there’s also something more at stake, as the Cardinal (13-4, 6-3 Pac-10) looks to make a statement about just how far the program has come in recent years.

The Cardinal will have its best chance in recent memory to make a serious dent in the traditional Pac-10 pecking order — the team will send an experienced and talented squad to Eugene that has been building all season for this competition. As athletes and coaches are fond of repeating often, ‘it’s all just practice’ until the conference tournament, which can, of course, be a two-edged sword. Stanford’s best regular season record in three decades is now, essentially, meaningless in determining how many wrestlers will get their chances on the national stage.

The Cardinal’s rise as a program has been particularly noticeable in recent years — Stanford athletes have won All-American honors four times in the last four seasons. And now, for the first time since the 1960s, Stanford has two returning All-Americans headed to the conference tournament in senior No. 6 Tanner Gardner at 125 pounds and senior No. 9 Josh Zupancic at 157 pounds. Coupled with promising seasons from several underclassmen, the impending graduation of Gardner and Zupancic and their combined three All-American seasons have lent the 2007-08 Cardinal season a certain air of urgency. While it may not be ‘now or never,’ a fair question, given Stanford’s strong mix of talent, would be ‘if not now, when?’

Third year head coach Kerry McCoy has seen much of the Cardinal’s recent rise first-hand, but he was quick to give plenty of credit to his predecessors when asked about his role in the program’s return to relevance on the mat.

“I always say it’s a credit to the guys who were here before me,” he said. “Chris Horpel, who was a real help to me in my competitive career, laid the foundation of the program, keeping it alive and keeping Stanford wrestling on the map. And then Steve Buddie and those guys . . . when they were here they really started bringing it up. [They coached] here obviously when Matt Gentry was a national champion [in 2004], getting the program to that next level.”

“Really what it comes down to is the athletes themselves,” said McCoy after giving still more credit to his various assistant coaches. “I came in, I brought a system in, they bought into the system and followed through. And when you have that, if you ask any of those other coaches that have been real successful here, you have a system, have a philosophy and the athletes buy into it, you’re going to be successful.”

Gardner (35-1) and Zupancic (33-5) have, expectedly, anchored the Cardinal lineup this season, with Gardner needing just one more pin to match the single season Stanford record and one win to tie the school’s career victories record. But contributions have come from nearly every weight class in making this a season to remember for the Cardinal thus far.

Redshirt freshman Lucas Espericueta (23-10) at 149 pounds and sophomore Jake Johnson (24-11) at 197 pounds will each take part in their first Pac-10 tournament after strong debut seasons as regular starters in the Stanford lineup. Junior Luke Feist (13-9) at 174 pounds overcame an early season injury and came on strong down the stretch, winning 10 of his last 12 matches to earn the second rank in the conference. Sophomore Zach Giesen (22-8) at 184 pounds has had a solid follow-up season to his 2006-07 effort, which earned him Pac-10 Co-Freshman of the Year honors, and has already tallied his 50th career victory. Senior heavyweight Phil Doerner (16-19) has more than doubled his career win total with this season’s effort and will look to close out his collegiate career with a bang.

Rounding out the 10 likely wrestlers for the Cardinal at the conference tournament are freshmen Porfirio Madrigal (9-10) at 133 pounds, Max Rosefigura (12-13) at 141 pounds and Kyle Barrett (4-4), who stepped in late in the season for injured redshirt sophomore Peter Miller at 165 pounds. They all look to make strong first impressions on the conference’s biggest stage.

Fans can watch the Cardinal go for their first ever Pac-10 title starting Sunday at 11 a.m. as for the second straight year matches will be broadcast live via online streaming video at www.pac-10.org