MSU Women?s Golf Set for Third Straight NCAA Regional Appearance
Starkville, Miss. – Coming off a monumental regular season, the Mississippi State women’s golf team now turns its attention toward the postseason, where it begins NCAA regional action Thursday in Raleigh, N.C.
The tournament will be hosted at the Poole Golf Course. The course will play host to 18 teams, with the top six advancing to the NCAA Championship. The bracket is loaded with SEC talent, including top seeded South Carolina, No. 2 LSU, No. 5 Florida, and eighth-seed Alabama.
“The SEC is a very strong conference, so, we expected to see a lot of teams in our conference there,” senior Rica Tse said. “Although we didn’t do as well as we would of liked in the SEC Championship, I think it was a great buildup for us to prove where we actually belong.”
This trip marks the third-straight year the Bulldogs have advanced to post-season regional. Last season the team found itself in Stillwater, Okla., for the central region bracket. MSU finished third, with senior Ally McDonald leading the team, firing one-under-par in the event to place third.
“In year’s past, I’ve had really good experience there,” McDonald said. “I think we are really excited. The North Carolina region was one that we had hoped for, so we are very excited to get there and play.”
Coach Ginger Brown-Lemm is leading her team to the NCAA Regionals for the third-straight season. This year, she now has a group of veterans that wont be satisfied with just a regional appearance and expects the best play thus far.
“I am excited to go to North Carolina, as it's really one of the sites we wanted to go to the most,” Brown-Lemm said. “The weather is more consistent there, better than some of the other locations. More importantly though, the grass is similar to what we have here in Mississippi, where as some of the other sites have grass that is completely different than what we are used to. We hope to use this at our advantage.”
The goal all season was to get better each time out. The mature team did just that, bouncing back every time it got down. Finishing in the Top 10 of every tournament in the regular season marked the best golf season to date in MSU history.
The squad tees up for the first round Thursday at 8 a.m. CT. Live stats provided through golfstat.com.