Houston will compete against No. 1 seed Duke, No. 2 seed Vanderbilt, No. 3 seed Florida State, No. 4 seed Auburn, No. 5 seed Virginia, No. 6 seed Furman, No. 7 seed Clemson, No. 9 seed Kennesaw State, No. 10 seed Alabama, No. 11 seed Tennessee, No. 12 seed California, No. 13 seed Maryland, No. 14 seed ECU, No. 15 seed Denver, No. 16 seed South Alabama, No. 17 seed Albany and No. 18 seed Murray State.
_ _ The NCAA Auburn Regional will be held May 6-8 at Saugahatchee Country Club in Opelika, Ala. From NCAA Regional play, 24 teams and 12 individuals will advance to the NCAA Championships, set for May 17-22 at Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.
Lets go Ladies and end the season playing your best golf of the year. Extremely proud how you Ladies have continued, in the short time the program has been around, to strive for excellence and the Legacy created by the first wave of girls that have set the bar high. To think this program is only 6 years old. Thank you head coach Gerrod Chadwell for a tremendous job you have done and again hats off ladies and will be watching to see how y’all do.
Houston will compete against No. 1 seed Duke, No. 2 seed Vanderbilt, No. 3 seed Florida State, No. 4 seed Auburn, No. 5 seed Virginia, No. 6 seed Furman, No. 7 seed Clemson, No. 9 seed Kennesaw State, No. 10 seed Alabama, No. 11 seed Tennessee, No. 12 seed California, No. 13 seed Maryland, No. 14 seed ECU, No. 15 seed Denver, No. 16 seed South Alabama, No. 17 seed Albany and No. 18 seed Murray State.
_ _ The NCAA Auburn Regional is one of four Regional sites across the nation, hosting a 72 total teams. The top-6 teams and top-3 individuals not on a qualifying team advance to the NCAA Championships, set for May 17-22 at The Blessings Golf Club in Fayetteville, Ark.
18+ over during the first round at the Auburn Regional. Not good and a pretty poor performance today. Almost like they weren’t ready to compete. In 14th place with 12 strokes to make up over the remaining 2 rounds and 8 teams to jump. Definitely not the team that was scoring down the stretch of the spring season and certainly not the team that scored so well at the conference championship. We’ll see how they respond tomorrow. They have a lot of ground to make up and will need to score well under par to make up that ground on a course that only the lead team scored -1 today (Vanderbilt).
I think we will have a nice bounce back tomorrow. Looking for Maria Jose Martinez to come back strong…freshman jitters. We are actually playing fairly close to our ranking. The big surprise is unranked East Carolina at in third at +3.
They were a fairly average and oh hum ranked team until Martinez was inserted into the lineup and excelled just around the mid-point of the spring season and Rayner strated to play well and then they excelled. The big difference was that Martinez and Rayner really played well the 2nd half of the spring season. With both of them blowing up today it just shot them out of contention. It won’t be easy. The course is not giving up low team scores unlike the Norman Regional where the top 6 teams are under par.
I expect Harm to go under tomorrow. She is such a gamer that shooting 1.5 strokes over her average today will motivator her to go low. Plus, she may be on the outside looking in from going to the championship as an individual.
Possibly Martinez and Rayner will relax tomorrow with their poor rounds today and get back to how they played this spring.
This isn’t AAC competiton (except for ECU) where they are the only ranked team, they have 12 ranked teams in this Region and have three other ranked teams around them that didn’t play well today either.
If they don’t make a huge move tomorrow their dreams of achieving their first NCAA Championship round will be down the drain like the last 4 Regionals.
Ok Ladies 1st round jitters out of the way. Now just play like you know how. Don’t try and make it up in one round, unless of course you are blazing away with birdie after birdie.
Better with +5 versus yesterday’s +18, but they were -3 at one point with 9 to play and they didn’t take advantage of their rising leader board position. They didn’t have a good back 9. At +23. If they had the same back 9 that they had on the front 9 they are right in it and in great spot to chase tomorrow. But they had the bad back 9 and they are probably pretty much done right now.
Auburn holds that 6th spot and only had a +2 today on their home course. Expect Auburn to finish out tomorrow and secure their ticket.
The big surprise of the Auburn Regional is the show ECU is putting on with the 5th spot currently. We’ll see how they play tomorrow and whether they can withstand the pressure. They are unranked and it would be a huge get for ECU to qualify.
Looks like today will be the end of the road for the Coogs:
After 9, Coogs are 20 back. Rayner is still the top golfer for the Coogs, but she’s tied for 40th right now so doesn’t look like any individuals will advance either.
Great season, but it looks like the team just had a bad week.
They seem to consistently struggle at the Regional tournaments and undershoot potential or expectations. Even their best team when Leonie was a freshman choked the 6th spot away on the 18th hole by losing 4 strokes on that hole to BYU to a dissappointing 7th place finish when they had qualifying for the NCAA Championship in their back pocket.
This week they go in ranked 31st and seeded 8th (similar to previous years) and they shoot +18 1st round, +5 2nd round, and +11 today for a +34 for the tournament well behind their 31st ranking and 8 seed.
Although they ended up blowing away everyone at the conference championship again, two of the teams they kicked good at the conference championship out perform them in the Regionals with non-ranked ECU just missing qualifying with a poor 3rd day after riding the 5 hole the first 2 days and UCF qualifying in the 6th spot in another regional. Seriously, ECU should have never beat the Coogs by 17 strokes at this tournament. UCF sure got the pub on the Golf Channel this afternoon after that big surprise of capturing that prise to the NCAA Championships.
You are right, they have a ways to go to be an elite program and this was a very senior heavy squad with 3 RS seniors, 1 senior who will be the best golfer in program history for quite some time, and a junior. They do have 2 very promising freshman with lots of experience to re-build. But overall, they need to start playing better at Regionals. What ever that Regional formula is for success, they need to find it or discover it and apply it.
Winning conference championships are great, but performing at Regionals and beyond is the goal, certainly not underperforming at Regionals.
