It’s time to go.

Saturday morning the postseason begins, and the third-ranked ISU wrestling team will seek to defend its conference champion title at the Big 12 Tournament in Stillwater, Okla.

“This is what we work for all year,” said coach Cael Sanderson. “This is the time to be at our best, and we will. I know we will be physically, and they should be mentally. We keep on saying now is the time to go out and take it.”

Iowa State has a chance to win back-to-back conference titles for the first time since 1980. Heavyweight David Zabriskie won the final match of last year’s Big 12 Tournament to give the Cyclones their first outright conference title since 1982.

There is no clear-cut favorite in this year’s meet. Four of the five teams in the conference are seen as legitimate contenders for the team title. If matches were decided by bracket seeds, Sanderson said the meet would be decided by only a few points.

“The team that shows up and wrestles well on Saturday is the team that is going to be the Big 12 champs,” Sanderson said. “Just through the dual meets and through the season, we’ve seen there is a lot of parity in the conference. Everybody has really beaten everybody, so it’s going to be who’s ready and wants it the most.”

The top three placewinners in each weight division automatically advance to the NCAA Tournament. Eight additional wild-card berths are decided by coaches after the meet.

Seven ISU wrestlers will likely be seeded third or higher, meaning they would need one win to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. With only five matches at each weight class, each will be key to deciding the championship.

Fourth-ranked Nebraska is expected to be in the thick of the title hunt, along with fifth-ranked Oklahoma State and 12th-ranked Missouri.

Sanderson said the first round will decide which team wins the championship. Last year, Iowa State’s balanced roster overcame a 5-5 performance in the semifinal round.

“It’s a big time team effort,” Sanderson said. “You need everybody’s best effort, whether it’s finishing third instead of fourth or winning it when you get in the finals . to win we need the best performance out of each guy, and that means the guys that are borderline of qualifying or not, we need them to not leave it up to the coaches to give them a wild card and earn their own way.”

The Cyclones were awarded three wild-card qualifications for fourth-place finishers in last March’s tournament – including one for senior Kurt Backes, who went on to reach the NCAA Tournament finals.

Seventh-ranked Nick Fanthorpe (133 pounds) was awarded a wild card berth last season and is one of six returning sophomore NCAA qualifiers.

“Our coaches say that the best thing you can do for the team is worry about your matches and worry about yourself,” Fanthorpe said. “These are the guys you’ve been with the whole season. We’ve got individual goals, but we’ve got team goals too, and I don’t want to disappoint those guys at all either.”