Here’s what you missed from the past week in college golf.
The college golf regular season is close to its conclusion.
Many women’s college golf teams are beginning their conference tournaments this week, and next week is when the men will try to claim conference titles. It’s the final chance for teams to make a push into the postseason.
Every day, the picture is coming more into focus on which teams are fighting for a title and others who are looking to be a dark-horse contender.
From Sam Bennett’s return home from Augusta to Rose Zhang’s first competition since winning the Augusta National Women’s Amateur, here are some of the best storylines in college golf from the past week.
Results from 2023 women’s conference championships across the country.
Conference championship season is underway in women’s college golf, with all roads leading to the NCAA Championship at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona, next month.
Teams who win their conference title score an Automatic Qualifying spot in NCAA Regionals, which is a big deal for any team that might find itself on the bubble for an at-large postseason selection. A win earns you a postseason bid and gets you closer to a spot in the NCAA Championship.
And this year, 30 women’s teams will make it to Grayhawk, matching the men for the first time.
Conference championships are listed below along with the date and venue, and we’ll continue to update the list with winners and storylines as tournaments wrap up.
“The Queen” gets one more chance to compete as a member of the Auburn Tigers.
The season has not come to an end yet for Auburn senior [autotag]Derrian Gobourne[/autotag] who has qualified for the NCAA National Championship Meet as an individual qualifier on floor.
This accomplishment adds to Gobourne’s extensive resume as an Auburn gymnast. Other notable achievements by Gobourne include a National Championship on vault in 2019, a national runner-up title on beam and floor in 2022, and all-SEC honors for four straight seasons.
The fifth-year senior has been an asset for the Tigers since her arrival at Auburn in 2019 and an individual National Championship on floor would increase Gobourne’s status as one of the best athletes to ever represent the program even further.
Tennessee has nine podium finishes at national championship meet.
The Lady Vols concluded its 2022-23 season with an eighth-place finish at the NCAA Swimming and Diving Championships Saturday at Allan Jones Intercollegiate Aquatics Center.
Tennessee finished the multi-day event with nine podium finishes.
In the 200 freestyle, the Lady Vols’ Brooklyn Douthwright finished second with a time of 1 minute, 42.41 seconds.
Mona McSherry finished with two individual podium efforts as she claimed second in the 100 breast with a time of 57.16. She also finished fourth in the 200 breast (2:04.59).
Tennessee had a pair of podium finishers in the 1,650 free as Kristen Stege came in fourth and Alyssa Breslin claimed sixth.
Josephine Fuller also had two individual podium finishes at the national championships as she took fourth in the 200 back with a mark of 1:50.22. She came in seventh in the 100 back as she touched the wall in 51.18.
In the 800 free relay, Tennessee’s team of Douthwright, Sara Strothler, Julia Mrozinski and Elle Caldow posted a fifth-place finish (6:57.49).
In the 400 medley relay, the Lady Vols’ team of Strotler, Douthwright, Fuller and McSharry finished fifth (3:27.92).
Editor’s Note: The following is an official press release courtesy of LSU’s athletics department.
KNOXVILLE, Tennessee – Eleven LSU swimmers and divers are getting ready for the 2023 NCAA Championships and the opportunity to vie for a national title starting Thursday in Knoxville at the Allan Jones Aquatic Center on the University of Tennessee’s campus.
“It’s really exciting to have such a large group of swimming and diving women representing LSU at the NCAA Championships this week,” head diving coach Drew Livingston said. “It speaks to the growth and strength of our women’s program. We’re not just here to participate, though. We have some student-athletes who have opportunities this week to score points, become All-Americans, and possibly win some national titles. The sky is the limit for what we can do this week and I’m excited to be a part of this team. Geaux Tigers!”
LSU, which is ranked No. 17 in the latest CSCAA dual meet poll, sent four individual swimmers, three relay alternates, and four divers. Maggie MacNeil will compete in the most events as an individual for the Tigers including the 50-yard free, 100-yard free, and 100-yard fly. She is also set to swim in at least two relays.
Additionally, LSU’s remaining individual competitors include 200-fly SEC Champion Jenna Bridges and freshman Megan Barnes. The Tigers’ 200-back SEC Champion Ella Varga, who is in her first year in Baton Rouge, will also compete individually. Bridges will swim in the 200-fly, Barnes will compete in the 200-free, and Varga will race in the 200-back.
On the diving side, LSU had an impressive outing in Minneapolis at the Zone D diving regional. The Tigers qualified a total number of nine times, and four different divers accomplished the feat.
Helle Tuxen and Montserrat Gutierrez Lavenant qualified for all three events. Lavenant, who is the 2023 SEC Champion on platform looks to match her performance on the tower and score some valuable points on the springboard events. Chiara Pellacani, a four-time SEC medalist, finished within the required standard on both springboard events. Maggie Buckley qualified for her first NCAA meet on platform.
LSU begins its journey Thursday at 9 a.m. CT with the prelim session. The Tigers have participants in the 500-free, 50-free, one-meter diving, and 200-free relay events. The meet is available to stream on ESPN+ and live stats can be viewed on the MeetMobile app. For diving-specific events, divemeets.com carries live scores from dive to dive.
TICKET INFO
All-session tickets for the 2023 NCAA Women’s Swimming and Diving Championships are sold out.
Diving prelim tickets will be sold for $10 each, beginning at approximately 12 p.m. ET each day of diving. Tickets will be sold outside the facility, and this only grants access to prelims.
All tickets will be mobile tickets. Individuals must download the Tennessee Volunteers app in order for the ticket to be transferred to them. All fans must possess a ticket and will be asked to show their ticket each time they enter the seating area of the facility. The only exception is for a child under two years of age that will be sitting on an adult’s lap. If the child needs his or her own seat at any point during the session, a ticket must be purchased.
Additional Details
All tickets will be delivered via mobile ticketing. There will be no paper tickets available.
To access the tickets, fans will need to go to https://am.ticketmaster.com/allvols/ and use the email address in which the tickets were sent to create a new account or sign into their existing account.
Everyone who receives a ticket will need to download the Tennessee Athletics App.
They will need to save their tickets to their phones prior to the event to be safe in the event of Wi-FI issues on site. We will have scanners at all the doors to scan mobile tickets on the phones.
If there is an issue at the entrance with tickets, we will have a ticket office representative will be on site.
Tennessee athletes post top marks at the indoor championships.
Lady Vols’ graduate student Charisma Taylor earned a pair of medals at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships Saturday at the Albuquerque Convention Center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Taylor posted a second-place finish in the women’s triple jump with a leap of 14.88 meters (48 feet, 10 inches).
The effort earned her a silver medal and is the second highest mark in NCAA history. She also ranks second on the world list in 2023.
Jacious Sears finished third in the finals of the 60-meter dash with a time of 7.10.
Distance specialist Dylan Jacobs finished sixth in the men’s 3,000-meter run as he completed the race in 7:52..25.
Jacobs, a graduate student, won the national championship in the 5,000-meter run Friday.
Sprinter Emmanuel Bynum set a school record in the 400-meter dash, breaking his own mark in the event (45.30).
Bynam teamed with Clement Ducos, Jakwan Hale and Rasheeme Griffith to finish tenth in the 4×400 relay, posting a time of 3:08.61 for the Vols.
“Some programs may need to rethink their scheduling.”
It’s a change that has been discussed for years, and it’s finally coming to Division I women’s college golf.
The NCAA competitions oversight committee approved the .500 rule, and the NCAA notified coaches last week that the changes would go into effect for the 2024-25 season. The .500 rule requires a team to finish the regular season with a .500 or better winning percentage head-to-head against other Div. I opponents to be eligible for regionals. The lone exception is if a team wins its conference title. Div. I men’s college golf has had the .500 rule since 2007-08.
Mark Bedics, the NCAA’s associate director of championships for Div. I women’s golf, said the COC recently asked the women’s golf committee to revisit the .500 rule, which didn’t pass a vote in 2016. The committee sent a survey to head coaches and assistants from all 269 D-I programs in early January. About 75 percent of coaches responded. Of that number, more than 70 percent of that number voted in favor.
“The COC came back and said to women’s golf that they were the only sport that didn’t have a .500 rule and asked them to explain why not,” Bedics told Golfweek. “We asked why women’s golf needed to be different from every other sport, and there was no compelling reason why. Therefore, they passed it.”
Campbell women’s coach John Crooks was one of the coaches pushing most for the rule change. He said the rankings will be more accurate now with more teams getting the recognition they deserve instead of those with losing records being invited to regionals.
“Adopting the .500 rule is great news for women’s golf,” Crooks said. “Finally, the NCAA Committee addressed the issue with fresh new eyes. I would personally like to thank the committee members for doing the right thing.”
Courtney Gunter is the head women’s coach at Western Carolina, a mid-major, and she played collegiately at North Carolina. She has a unique perspective from both sides. Gunter said the .500 rule could keep her team in a strange middle area, but she’s a proponent of the rule.
“I believe the .500 (rule) has been long overdue in our sport,” she said. “Year after year we see at least one team, many times more, getting an at-large bid to regionals based on their schedule and not how they actually performed.
“Spots at regionals shouldn’t be taken by teams that don’t have a .500 record. It’s not fair to teams just outside that magic number that have shown they are worthy and have a great chance at making a run in post season.”
One of the most significant changes will be how teams make their schedules. It means there’s likely to be more mixing between Power-5 opponents and mid-majors.
“I think we all recognize that there will be some changes to scheduling, and it will be interesting to see how everyone manages it,” Wisconsin coach Todd Oerhlein said. “More head-to-head connections between teams should only improve the accuracy of the rankings.”
Added James Madison coach Tommy Baker: “The .500 rule being passed will undoubtedly allow for more of an equal playing field as it pertains to qualifying as an ‘at-large’ selection for postseason play. I am not aware of any other sport that allows teams with under .500 win/loss record to play in postseason, so it’s a no brainer on that front alone. It gets tougher every season trying to bolster our strength of schedule, and this should allow for more flexibility and opportunities moving forward. I understand and respect the concerns voiced by my colleagues at Power 5 institutions but feel this creates more opportunities than it does deny them.”
Pepperdine coach Laurie Gibbs, who is in her 30th season at the helm and has guided the Waves to 12 NCAA Championship appearances, said the change shouldn’t affect teams ranked in the top 30, nor will it impact the NCAA Championship field.
“There are some excellent tournaments that will begin to rotate a few invitations each year and provide more opportunities for mid-major teams and student-athletes to play,” Gibbs said.
Of the top-50 teams in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings, five have a winning percentage below .500 as of Feb. 24: Florida, Michigan, North Carolina, California and Alabama.
UCLA coach Carrie Forsyth said arguments made against the .500 rule by top programs sound like coaches trying to protect themselves and their tournament schedules.
“Most top programs don’t want to have to compete in weaker fields just to ensure they can make it to postseason, but that’s what is likely to happen,” Forsyth said. “Ultimately, women’s golf was the last NCAA sport that did not have a .500 rule in place, and we could not justify that position any longer in the current climate. We already play a mixed bag of super-strong field events and mid-range events. I don’t see us making any changes to what we do because of this new rule. But some programs may need to rethink their scheduling.”
Mid-major programs have long clamored for more opportunities, and this will undoubtedly give them those. East Tennessee State coach Stefanie Shelton said similar to increasing the amount of teams at the NCAA Championships to 30, this is a step forward for women’s college golf.
“I believe the depth of competitive teams in NCAA women’s golf is deeper than ever, and I am pro-opportunities for the ladies,” Shelton said. “I believe this move will open a lot of doors for mid-majors.”
Teams won’t have to reshape their entire schedules. It’s likely only two or three tournaments, if even, will be switched up. And in some cases, none.
However, come 2024-25, the .500 rule will finally be in women’s college golf.
“Hopefully this opens up opportunities for teams and student-athletes to experience more courses and visit areas of the country they haven’t been, as well,” Bedics said.
The men’s 13 athletes are spread over nine events, the most of any team at the meet. Texas athletes are a part of eight events and Florida, Tennessee, Texas Tech and Washington have athletes in involved in seven events. Arkansas’ women will participate in six events. Texas, Florida and Oregon are in nine.
The men will participate in the 4×400 for the fifth straight year at the championships and the 4×400 for the 13th straight year. That mark is five years behind Texas A&M’s record 18.
Freshman Jaydon Hibbert is one of the men’s favorites for an individual title. The freshman is the only athlete in the college ranks to jump beyond 56 feet in the triple jump during the indoor season.
Six of Arkansas’ nine athletes are in the 400-meter dash. Amber Anning is the third-seed overall after running 50.68 at the SEC meet. Rosey Effiong, Britton Wilson, Joanne Reid, Nickisha Pryce and Paris Peoples join her.
The Arkansas men last won the indoor national championship in 2012. The women won the event in 2021 on their home track in Fayetteville.
College golf fans are going to be treated with plenty of live coverage this spring.
College golf fans are going to be treated with plenty of live coverage this spring.
NBC Sports announced Tuesday that Golf Channel and Peacock would air nearly 150 hours of live college golf this spring, with the main feature being the 2023 men’s and women’s NCAA Championships at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale, Arizona. In addition, three of the top tournaments in the country will be also be televised.
Coverage begins Jan. 30-Feb. 1 in California with the Southwestern Invitational from North Ranch Country Club in Westlake Village. It will be broadcast from 4:30-7:30 p.m. ET.
Up next is the Darius Rucker Intercollegiate from Feb. 27-March 1 at Long Cove Club in Hilton Head, South Carolina. Last year, it became the first all-women’s regular season college event to be carried on Golf Channel. This year, it will be on from 2:30-5:30 p.m. ET.
The final regular season event is the Western Intercollegiate Pasatiempo Golf Club in Santa Cruz, California. It will broadcast April 10-12. The first two days will be live from 7-10 p.m. ET and the final day will be 4-7 p.m. ET.
The final three days of the women’s (May 22-24) and men’s (May 29-31) NCAA Championships will be broadcast as well, with nearly 70 hours of coverage being shown during those two weeks.
Vanderbilt is the top-ranked men’s team in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings heading into the spring, while defending national champion Stanford is on top of the women’s rankings.
Earlier this week, the NCAA announced that the field at the Division I Women’s Championship would increase from 24 teams to 27. This was done to “provide an equitable championship access ratio across both Division I men’s and women’s golf.”
Except, in the minds of many, it did not provide equity. Many believe that because the men have 30 teams at nationals, the women are still being short-changed. In other NCAA championships, the field size and setup mirror each other for the men and women after the opening round. In golf, it does not.
“I think, in general, we use equity when we’re trying to help the underserved or underrepresented get gains,” said Rutgers head coach Kari Williams. “In this case, we’re using equity to penalize the women.”
Here’s how it currently works: The NCAA postseason begins with six regional fields for men’s and women’s golf. A total of 81 men’s teams and 72 women’s teams advance to regionals. This gives both the men and women 27 percent of the total number of Division I programs in NCAA postseason action. (Think of this like the first round of the men’s and women’s college basketball tournament.)
The NCAA bases its access ratio to the postseason on sport sponsorship (how many schools have teams). The breakdown is equal in men’s and women’s golf at 27 percent in Round 1.
But when it comes to how many teams advance to Round 2, the women had 24 move on to Arizona’s Grayhawk Golf Club in 2022 while the men had 30.
Trophies are lined up on a table at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale for the 2022 NCAA Div. I Men’s Golf Championship. (Photo: Golfweek)
Last February, the Division I Women’s Golf Committee recommended to the Division I Competition Oversight Committee that the women’s field at the finals site be increased to match the men at 30. In April, the COC tabled the discussion. They got back to it in June (after the championship) and denied the request, noting that “the number of student-athletes at the finals should be based more on sport sponsorship (which is greater for men’s golf than for women’s golf) than as a comparison to men’s golf.”
The Women’s Golf Committee came back in July and put forth a recommendation to raise the number to 27, noting that the men’s and women’s fields would then be equal from a sports sponsorship standpoint at 10 percent. (Total budget impact of three additional teams was an estimated $46,000.)
The NCAA agreed to increase the field to 27 teams, calling it an “equitable championship access ratio across both Division I men’s and women’s golf.”
But here’s the thing: The women are being penalized twice for having fewer programs.
What’s more: It doesn’t work like this in other sports, even in those where the total number of women’s programs outweighs the men.
For example, in soccer there were 203 men’s teams and 337 women’s teams eligible for the postseason. The first round of the soccer championship included 48 men’s teams (24 percent) and 64 women’s teams (19 percent). After that initial reduction of teams in the first round to account for the access ratio, the championships mirrored each other.
Thirty-two teams advanced to Round 2 for both men and women.
Not only did the same number of teams advance for both genders, the access ratio in the second round once again favored the men at 16 percent compared to 9 percent (despite the women having more teams across the country!).
There were more women’s tennis teams (300) than men’s tennis teams (233) that were eligible for the postseason this year. The brackets for both championships were the same, with each Round 1 starting with 64 teams. The access ratio here favors the men in Round 1 at 27 percent to 21 percent for the women.
USC after winning the 2022 NCAA Stanford Regional. (Photo: USC Women’s Golf)
Frustrations for many in women’s college golf right now center not only around the fact that 27 teams aren’t enough, but that 27 creates a numbers headache.
“It’s a hard math problem when you have six regional sites and 27 advance,” said Ohio State coach Lisa Strom.
The NCAA plans to implement a strength-of-field metric into the selection process “to ensure maximum balance and fairness at six regional sites.” Three sites will advance four teams and the remaining three will advance five.
In addition, the tee sheet at Grayhawk will be imbalanced between the two waves. Advancing 27 teams simply isn’t as clean and workable as an even number like 30.
“I don’t even want to go there,” said TCU head coach Angie Larkin. “I would love for them to change it to 30 right now.”
And there’s plenty of time for the NCAA to reverse course before May.
This will no doubt be a hot topic of discussion next week at the Women’s Golf Coaches Association member convention in Las Vegas.
COC chair Renee Baumgartner, former women’s golf coach at USC and Oregon and current Santa Clara athletic director, reiterated to Golfweek that the decision was based on sponsorship numbers and being consistent across the board. When asked about other sports like tennis and soccer, Baumgartner said, “It’s not apples to apples, in a sense, for bracketing.”
While the bracket portion of golf doesn’t start until the quarterfinals, the number of total teams at Grayhawk (27 and 30) is in the ballpark of a typical Round of 32 bracket in many other sports.
The Women’s Golf Committee certainly could’ve provided more of a statistical analysis when it first recommended the move to 30 teams back in February. Something beyond the fact that the women “deserve” it.
A comparison to other sports and a reiteration that the difference in sponsorship numbers is addressed the first round, and that further cuts shouldn’t be required, needed to be addressed along with the simple question: So what if the women’s championship has 11 percent of teams at Grayhawk compared to the men’s 10 percent?
Women have been and continue to be behind percentage-wise in so many other areas, why does a 1 percent advantage matter so much here?
There are times when a step in the right direction should be celebrated. And while the increase to 27 teams creates more opportunities for student-athletes, this is not one of those times.
“During my four years on the DI Women’s Golf Committee (2003-2007), we continually talked about why the women should have the same number of teams as the men at regionals and the NCAA Championship,” said Pepperdine head coach Laurie Gibbs, whose teams have qualified for regionals for 23 consecutive years.
“With all the discussion of equity over the last three years, it is time for the numbers to be equal.”
There’s a standard being applied to women’s college golf that is not found across the board in the postseason. The Women’s Golf Committee should go back to the COC in short order and again ask for 30 teams. Perhaps it’s also time for student-athletes, especially those on teams who will easily advance to nationals, to use their platforms to push for 30.
