While the Cardinal wrestlers may not have faced a powerhouse Friday in San Francisco State, the squad’s trouncing of the Gators nevertheless could prove to be a valuable building block for a program looking to gain conference and national relevancy under head coach Kerry McCoy — to be the “Best in the West” as he puts it.

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Alvin Chow

Brian Perry (white uniform), shown here in an intrasquad match with teammate Scott Loescher, won by technical fall in the Cardinal’s 37-6 victory over San Francisco State last weekend.

Stanford’s decisive 37-6 victory over SF State was perhaps the first time in the past two seasons that the Cardinal not only controlled a match, but dominated it.

“[The team] definitely can carry that confidence forward, because it’s really the first time since I’ve been here that we’ve had that kind of performance,” McCoy, in his second season at Stanford, said. “We wrestled SF State last year, and we controlled the pace of the match, but we really didn’t dominate like that. I think now that they’ve had that experience they can feel like it’s possible. That was really important for guys to step up to the next level and really go out and believe in themselves.”

The Cardinal (3-5) won nine of 10 matches against the Gators (1-8). Junior Tanner Gardner at 125 pounds and sophomore Luke Feist at 174 pounds each pinned their opponents, and senior Brian Perry at 165 pounds won by technical fall. Perhaps most impressively, in matches not decided by fall, Stanford’s average margin of victory was well over seven points.

“What I saw was guys wrestling with confidence, and that’s one of the biggest things that our guys have to do, no matter who it is we’re competing against,” McCoy said. “If they’re wrestling like they did there — going out and dominating and not worrying about the score — good things are going to happen. And we’d run up scores of fifteen or twenty points in some matches, and that’s huge to be able to score that much.”

Of course, given the opponent the Cardinal were facing, anything less than a complete victory would have been disappointing. But McCoy stressed that, if anything, the fact that his team didn’t overlook SF State, which has won just one match over the past two seasons, was the most positive aspect of the win.

“It wasn’t an awesome performance, it wasn’t a perfect performance, but we just wrestled tough,” McCoy said. “By no means did we take them lightly, and I think that was a big deal. We have to make sure we wrestle everyone, no matter who it is, that way.

McCoy says that the Cardinal’s performance bodes well for the heart of the Cardinal’s schedule coming up next month.

“A win is a win, and to dominate like that is really good,” he said. “But if we can wrestle with that intensity, and that belief and that fire in February, we’re going to do well in the Conference and at Nationals.”

Stanford will next face Cal State-Bakersfield this Sunday on the road. The Roadrunners have wrestled the Cardinal tough this year, and McCoy expects a challenge for his squad.

“They’ve outperformed us in just about every competition this year, and they’ve got a very solid team,” McCoy said. “No superstars per se, but a bunch of solid individuals — and when you have that it makes the team real strong. So we’re going to have to really go above and beyond to be competitive with them. On paper they’ve been doing a great job, so we’re definitely the underdogs going into this match, but the goal is still just to get prepared for the end of the year.”

Gardner, though, indicated that more good things could be on the horizon for a Stanford team that he believes is just now coming into its own.

“It was nice to finally come out and wrestle to our potential,” Gardner said. “The results showed just how hard we’ve been working.”