Middle Tennessee State University Athletics
Middle Tennessee
NCAA Regionals
Blue Raiders ready for San Diego Regional
5/18/2011 3:00:00 PM | Men's Golf
MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - For the fourth consecutive year, the Middle Tennessee men's golf team will compete in the regional round of the NCAA tournament, but this time they will have to go clear across the country to do it ... again.
Assigned to the San Diego Regional, the Blue Raiders will tee it up against 12 other teams from across the country this weekend for the right to advance to the finals in two weeks. The top five teams from each region will advance. Last year, the Blue Raiders played in the Washington Regional.
Coach Whit Turnbow feels like his young team has a shot at advancing to the finals, which they did three years ago when they finished 15th in the nation.
"At this level, it is so difficult to advance because you are talking about the best teams in the country. Its play well or go home at this point, but we certainly have a shot at it," declared Turnbow. "Of the 81 teams that are left, only 30 will advance. And we've been ranked right around that 30 mark all spring.
"But you can throw all the rankings out the window when it comes time. The five teams that play the best are going to advance and I really think we have a shot."
Turnbow said every member of the team has practiced hard, and also competed in some strong tournaments since the Sun Belt Conference tournament, when the Blue Raiders finished a disappointing fourth.
"We are rested and ready to play. We look pretty sharp right now," Turnbow said. "They have been through so much, ups and downs, winning and losing, and so much over the last year that they are going to be ready for what they are getting into.
"They got a little dose of it at the Sun Belt Conference tournament, where the pressure was ramped up a little bit, so they'll do fine. It's a good golf course for us, and I expect us to play well."
Also in the field with the Blue Raiders are four teams ranked in the Top 20 this week, including 4th ranked UCLA and 10th ranked Texas. Host San Diego State is 13th and Southern Cal is 20th. MT is ranked 50th this week by Golf Week, and 47th by GolfStat.
Other teams in the regional tournament are Ohio State, UNLV, North Texas, Tulsa, SMU, Pacific, San Francisco, and Cleveland State.
Middle Tennessee has one advantage over many of the other teams in that they have played, and won, on this course before. In 2008, the team won the prestigious Calloway Match Play tournament on the same Farms Club at Rancho Santa Fe course in San Diego. It is a very challenging 18 hole, Par 72 course that covers 6,947 yards.
Individually, the five-man team will be led as usual by Jason Millard, the lone senior on the team, and the only one who has played this course before. He was on the Calloway championship team three years ago.
"Jason never changes, he rarely gets rattled, and he's accomplished about as much as you can accomplish in a college golf career," Turnbow remarked. "He is fired up about this tournament, and I know he wants to go out on a high note. This is a golf course that he has seen before, so I would expect him to do very well."
Joining Millard on the five-man roster will be junior Hunter Green, who won back-to-back tournaments this spring, junior Brad Simons, who missed the Sun Belt tournament, and true freshmen Brett Patterson and Paul Sansom.
Millard, who has had at least one round in the 60s for 11 straight tournaments, leads the Blue Raiders with a 70.52 stroke average to rank fourth nationally, followed by Patterson (72.51), Green (73.16), Simons (74.20) and Sansom (75.24).
Turnbow reiterated what he has been saying all season; that the key to how well his teams does will be determined by the lower end of the order.
"If Brad Simons and Paul Sansom play well for us, we are really hard to beat. If we play well as a group, and none of the five get what I call 'out of the game', we are hard to beat.
"If someone gets out of the game, then you are basically playing with four guys, and the pressure is really on them. And it's magnified at this level, because these other teams won't do that, so we have to have all five of them in the game all the time. We have to have consistency across the board."
The Blue Raiders play a practice round on Wednesday at 10:40 AM Central and will tee off Thursday for the start of the regional at 10:50 AM.
Fans may follow the Blue Raiders on Golfstat.com as well as ncaa.com.
