ETSU heading to San Diego Regional
SAN DIEGO – For the second straight year, the ETSU men’s golf team will be heading out west for the NCAA Regional as the 39th-ranked Buccaneers are the No. 7 seed in the San Diego Regional, which will be played at The Farms Golf Club from May 14-16.
ETSU, who will be making its 24th NCAA Regional appearance and the 20th under head coach Fred Warren, earned the automatic bid after winning the Southern Conference Championship in a playoff over UNCG on April 21 at Pinehurst No. 9.
“This is a very tough regional, but we are glad to still be playing,” said head coach Fred Warren. “We are looking forward to going out there and they guys are excited to be playing in the San Diego Regional.”
A total of 81 teams make up the six regional sites, with the top five teams from each regional advancing to the NCAA Championship. The top individual finisher who is not a member of one of the top five teams will also earn a spot in the championship. The teams will be play 54 holes over a three-day span at each regional site.
The NCAA Championship will be played May 29-June 3 at Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla. The Golf Channel will air live coverage of the final three days of the NCAA Men’s Golf Championships, June 1-3. ETSU is looking to advance to its first NCAA Championship since 2008.
Last season, the Bucs received an at-large berth to the NCAA Regional and were sent to Oregon for the Eugene Regional, where Rhys Pugh, Adrian Meronk, Chris Hickman, Gudmundur Kristjansson and Mateusz Gradecki made their first NCAA Regional appearance and the Blue and Gold tied for eighth at the Eugene Country Club.
The NCAA Regionals were announced Monday morning during the Golf Channel’s “Morning Drive.”
Mercer’s Trey Rule to compete in Chapel Hill Regional
MACON, Ga. – Just a week removed from earning All-Southern Conference honors, Mercer University senior Trey Rule learned his collegiate career will continue as he was selected to participate in the 2015 NCAA Division I Regional in Chapel Hill, N.C., on May 14-16.
Rule will be making his third straight appearance in a NCAA Regional after claiming an automatic bid in 2014 as the Atlantic Sun individual champion and earning an at-large berth in 2013. He enters regional play seeded third among 10 individuals, joining fellow SoCon golfer J.T. Poston of Western Carolina at the UNC Finley Golf Course.
The top five teams from the NCAA Chapel Hill Regional and the highest-finishing individual not on one of those five teams will advance to the NCAA Championship. The NCAA finals will be conducted May 29-June 3 at the Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla.
The Eatonton, Ga., native is coming off a fourth-place finish at the 2015 SoCon Championship, earning all-conference honors for the third straight season. He carded a 2-under-par score of 214 after climbing up the leaderboard with an impressive 6-under 66 in the second round of action.
Mercer has had at least one student-athlete participate in a NCAA Regional in each of the past four years. The Bears sent their Atlantic Sun championship team to the 2014 Regional, while James Beale (2012), Hans Reimer (2013) and Rule (2013) competed as individuals the previous two seasons.
Rule placed ninth overall at the 2014 NCAA Regional in Raleigh, N.C., finishing just 10 strokes outside of qualifying for the NCAA Championship with a score of 870. His effort helped lead Bear into eighth place in the team standings during the program’s inaugural team appearance.
Western Carolina’s J.T. Posting heading to Chapel Hill Regional
CULLOWHEE, N.C. – Western Carolina senior J.T. Poston, the back-to-back men’s golf individual champion of the Southern Conference, was placed into the Chapel Hill, N.C., regional of the 2015 NCAA Men’s Golf Championship to be held May 14-16 at UNC’s Finley Golf Course. The announcement from the NCAA came Monday during the “Morning Drive” program on the Golf Channel, which will again provide coverage of the NCAA golf championships this spring.
Poston is joined in the Chapel Hill Regional by fellow SoCon individual Trey Rule from Mercer, who finished fourth at the conference tournament. The duo is joined in the NCAA postseason by SoCon team champion ETSU, which is headed to the Rancho Santa Fe, Calif., regional at The Farms Golf Club.
The Chapel Hill regional features five top-25 teams, including the top-ranked golf team in the NCAA according to the latest Golfstat Cup rankings in Florida State. The Seminoles are joined by No. 11 Stanford and the nation’s top-rated men’s golfer in sophomore Maverick McNealy; tournament host No. 19 North Carolina; No. 24 Kennesaw State and No. 25 Wake Forest. Overall among the 13-team field, nine squads are ranked in the top 50 and 11 inside the national top 100.
The regional also includes nine individuals ranked inside the top 50 nationally in the latest Golfstat Cup standings. All told, 17 of the 75 golfers that will tee off in the Chapel Hill Regional are ranked inside the national top 100.
Entering the NCAA postseason, Poston ranks 35th in the latest Golfstat Cup standings and is 27th in the most recent Golfstat statistical rankings. He is additionally 42nd in Sunday’s men’s collegiate individual rankings from Golfweek after compiling the second-best individual season scoring average in WCU men’s golf history at 70.69 – just off of his school single-season record 70.27 averaged in 2013-14. Each of Poston’s seasonal stroke averages over the past four years rank inside the top 11 in program history.
Poston enters postseason play in 2015 as WCU’s career stroke average leader at 71.65.
A two-time PING All-Region selection, Poston is making his third appearance in the NCAA postseason, each coming as an individual competitor. He matches former Catamount standout Matt Cook, who also played in three postseason tournaments – twice as an individual in 2006 and 2007 and with the WCU men’s squad with an at-large berth in 2008.
After garnering an at-large bid into postseason play in 2013 in the Tallahassee, Fla., regional, Poston finished tied for 38th overall. Last season, the Hickory, N.C., product stayed in-state in the Raleigh regional after claiming the conference title, again placing in a tie for 38th at the Lonnie Poole Golf Course. In six NCAA postseason rounds, Poston has a stroke average of 73.17 with three rounds of 72 or better.
Poston is coming off a regular season that saw the fourth-year striker claim individual medalist honors twice – bookending the spring semester with wins at the Wexford Plantation Intercollegiate in late February and most recently at the SoCon Championship at Pinehurst No. 9. He has nine top-10 finishes, entering the NCAA regional after back-to-back podium finishes including a runner-up showing at the Coca-Cola Wofford Invitational. He finished inside the top five individually in five of his seven spring tournaments.