The season comes down to the upcoming Pacific-10 Conference Tournament for Oregon’s top wrestlers. However, the tournament, held Sunday and Monday, provides a few Ducks a chance to prolong their season by earning a berth to the 2004 NCAA Championship.
In all, 10 Oregon wrestlers will compete beginning Sunday with a conference crown and a trip to St. Louis on the line.
The Pac-10 Tournament sends 41 wrestlers to compete in the NCAA Tournament. The Pac-10 champion in a respective weight class will also be joined at NCAAs by three or four runners-up in the same class. The Pac-10 also hands out 11 wildcards to wrestlers to represent the Pac-10 in the NCAA Tournament but who did not finish high enough to earn an automatic berth.
But for the Ducks, it’s more about putting the season behind them and focusing on upcoming matches that will determine if the young wrestlers have learned from their mistakes.
“We want to demonstrate improvement over the course of the season,” head coach Chuck Kearney said. “(And) that we beat people we’ve lost to. If we do that enough times we qualify people to the NCAA.”
Although Kearney wouldn’t say specifically how many Ducks he wants to qualify for the NCAA tournament to make it a successful trip, he believes that anywhere from three to seven Ducks will be selected for it.

Not quite veterans
Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how young Oregon is.
The Ducks have three freshmen starters: Joey Lucas, Cody Parker and Cyle Hartzell. Junior Dustin Fisher is in his first year as a starter, along with sophomore Joey Bracamonte.
“We have some young guys who are just starting out their college careers,” sophomore Chet McBee said. “You are looking at six to seven guys that are making their first Pac-10 tourney, and they don’t have a whole lot of experience in that area.”
For a third of Oregon’s starters this is the first tournament atmosphere since high school. It’s impossible to overstate the changes and challenges that come with competing against the Pac-10’s best compared to where some of the freshmen were just a year ago.
“High school tournaments are nothing compared to this,” McBee said. “It’s a joke. In a tournament like this there is immediate consequences. If you lose, you’re done. Season’s over. For some their careers are over, and if you do win you get three more weeks (of preparation for the NCAA tournament) and it’s something everyone strives for.”