Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
Middle Tennessee
Sun Belt Conference Championship
SBC Championships next for Raiders
4/25/2011 6:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
MUSCLE SHOALS, Ala. - The only guaranteed way to qualify for the NCAA Tournament is to win your league championship, so that makes it the top priority on every team's schedule. Even in the case of Middle Tennessee, which is likely to be invited to the NCAA tournament based on their national ranking of #40, winning the Sun Belt Conference Tournament is a premier goal at the start of every season.
Coach Whit Turnbow's team has had a great spring, winning three straight tournaments to open the spring portion of the schedule, but wound up with a sixth place finish at Ole Miss, and a 4th in the season finale at Irish Creek.
"In any sport, but especially golf, your season is going to ebb and flow, there are going to be highs and lows, and you just try to make the highs as high as they can be, and keep the lows from being too low," said Turnbow.
"But at this point, everybody is feeling pretty well, and playing solid, so we always think we have a chance, but as we always say, it's about us and not about anybody else. We can't play defense, we can't do anything about how the other team is playing. We'll just try to play the best we can play, and then three days later, we'll add it all up and see who wins."
For the second consecutive year, the SBC golf tournament will be held in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, at the state's award-winning Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, 18 holes each day. The tournament will be held on the Fighting Joe course, a long, Par 72 layout that is close to 8,000 yards.
Turnbow knew at the start of the schedule last fall that his team, having added three very talented freshmen, would be very young. But he also had leadership, experience and talent in senior Jason Millard, probably the league's top golfer, and juniors Hunter Green and Brad Simons to help bring them along.
Millard has won once this season, posting a school and course record 63 to take the Mobile Bay Intercollegiate in the first tournament of the spring half of the schedule. Green won the next two tournaments, the USF Invitational and the Bulldog Classic, and the team gained national recognition in the process.
Part of the success was due to the stellar, if sometimes inconsistent, play of freshmen Brett Patterson and Paul Sansom, but both have had their moments. Patterson has played 29 rounds, has the second-best stroke average on the team (72.55), his best round is a 67, and his best finish so far is a tie for 4th. Sansom has played 26 rounds, has a 75.23 average per round, shot a 66 at the Vanderbilt Legends Club, and his best finish is a tie for 11th at the USF Invitational.
Simons was slowed with injuries, and was struggling trying to change part of his game in the fall, but worked hard over the winter break, and had Top Ten finishes in the first three tournaments of the spring, but closed the spring with finishes 41st and 52nd. Then, to compound his problems, Coach Whit Turnbow announced that Simons has been suspended for one tournament for a violation of team rules.
He will be replaced by freshman Jordan Jennings, who played nine rounds in the fall, but has not been part of the five-man tournament roster since mid-October. He finished 44th at Duke's Invitational and has twice shot rounds of 71.
Turnbow feels the team is focused and ready to go.
"It's a hectic time of year. We are right up on final exams. We'll get back the day before finals start, so we'll have to do some studying and some things on the road to prepare ourselves for what we are getting into when we get back.
"They know what they are getting into, and they are ready to go. The team understands what is at stake, and they are seasoned at this point. Having played the schedule they've played and the teams they've played against, none of this is going to be new to them."
Turnbow sees no advantage in the fact that his team has only lost to one Sun Belt team all year, and that was to defending conference champion South Alabama, who won the tournament at Ole Miss.
"The way our golf is, we don't even get to see all the teams before this tournament. You can get a decent barometer about where you stand, but the nature of the game we play, and the fact that any team any week can win a golf tournament, you never know. It's going to be about who plays well this week. Just because we've had some success against the Sun Belt during the regular season doesn't necessarily mean that's going to be the case in this tournament.
"But, if we take care of our business, and do what we are good at, then I don't see anybody that can beat us."
Turnbow doesn't believe that taking three freshmen on his five-man team will be a problem. "They have never played in this event, and it will be a new experience for them, but they've seen enough at this point to understand how to get things done, and they know what it feels like to stand on the first tee, with the nerves and all. It's a new location for them, but as far as what is going to happen on the golf course, there is nothing new about it."
Turnbow named North Texas, South Alabama and UL Lafayette as the three teams most likely to challenge his Blue Raiders. And he pointed out that it was "win or go home" for nine of the 11 teams in the tournament, since MT and North Texas were the only ones likely to get at-large bids to the NCAA Regionals if they do not win the tournament.
"For those nine teams, it will be going for broke. They have nothing to lose and sometimes that pays off in the end. And if one of them wins, that would mean that the Sun Belt would send three teams to the NCAA for the first time ever, and that is a testament as to how good this league has become," said Turnbow.
Blue Raider fans can follow the progress of their team on Golfstat.com each day.
