May 9, 2011
NCAA Division I Men's Golf Championship: NCAA Site | Regional Participants Announced
(INDIANAPOLIS) - Cal was selected Monday to play in the 2011 NCAA Division I Men's Golf Championship and will be one of 81 teams continuing their seasons at six 54-hole NCAA Regionals across the country May 19-21. The Golden Bears are the No. 4 seed in the 14-team field at the NCAA Arizona Regional hosted by Arizona and will be scheduled to play 18 holes on each of the event's three days at par-72, 7,094-yard Tucson National.
"We've had a great year having won three times and being competitive nationally at virtually every event that we've played," said head coach Steve Desimone. "We were comfortable knowing we were going to be selected for NCAA play. It was really a question of where. We're excited to be going back to Tucson National. We've played there in the past with a lot of success."
Cal qualifies for an NCAA Regional for the fifth consecutive season and 16th time in school history. The Bears will be looking to advance to the finals of the NCAA Championship for the second straight year and seventh time overall. Cal won its lone NCAA title in 2004.
Texas A&M is the top seed at the NCAA Arizona Regional and is followed by San Diego State, Texas Tech, Cal, Liberty, Washington, Pepperdine, Oregon State, Purdue, UC Davis, Arizona, Texas-Arlington, Loyola Maryland and Army. Cal faced teams this field 31 times during its 2010-11 regular season and finished ahead of other schools on 20 of those occasions, including an 18-5 record against teams seeded below the Bears.
The other five NCAA Regionals will be hosted by Colorado (Colorado National Golf Club, Erie, Co.), Florida (Golden Ocala Golf Club (Ocala, Fla.), Indiana (Wolf Run Golf Club, Zionsville, Ind.), San Diego (The Farms Golf Club, San Diego, Calif.) and Virginia Tech (The Pete Dye River Course at Virginia Tech, Radford, Va.). The Colorado, San Diego and Virginia Tech Regionals will feature 13 teams and 10 individuals from non-qualifying teams. The Arizona, Florida and Indiana Regionals will have fields made up of 14 teams and five individuals from non-qualifiers.
The top five teams and the low individual not from those five teams from each of the six NCAA Regionals will advance to the finals of the NCAA Championship hosted by Oklahoma State May 31 - June 5 at Karsten Creek in Stillwater, Okla. The 30-team field will begin with 54 holes of stroke play over the first three days of the event. The top eight squads will move on to match play over the final three days to determine the NCAA champion.
The Golden Bears head into the 2010-11 post-season ranked No. 19 in the nation by both Golfweek and Golfstat. Cal finished fifth in its most recent action at the 2011 Pac-10 Men's Golf Championship and tied a school record for the second consecutive campaign with three regular-season team victories at The Prestige at PGA WEST, the Alister MacKenzie Invitational and the John A. Burns Intercollegiate.
The Bears' tentative lineup for the NCAA Arizona Regional will be Eric Mina, Stephen Hale, Max Homa, Michael Weaver and Ben An.
The opening tee time for the first two rounds on Thursday and Friday will be at 8 a.m. MST/PDT, while Saturday's action will get underway at 7:30 a.m. MST/PDT. Teams will begin from both the first and 10th tees. Cal will be paired up with Liberty and Washington starting on the 10th tee on Thursday's first day of action, with the first Cal player beginning at 8:20 a.m. MST/PDT. Pairings for Friday and Saturday will be determined following the conclusion of the previous round's action.
"You know when you're at the NCAA Regional level that it's going to be a tremendous event," said Desimone. "There is going to be a lot of great golf. You look up and down the Regional and every one of those teams can play and every one of them can get it going. We're going to have to play well to advance, but that's what you expect at a Regional so let's go play."
