BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s golf team returns to the NCAA regional round after a year’s absence as the 22nd-ranked Lady Tigers will play in the East Regional, May 6-8 at the Mission Inn Golf and Tennis Resort at Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla.
For Coach Karen Bahnsen, this will mark the 10th time her Lady Tiger team has advanced to the regional round since the format was adopted 12 years ago. Her team hosted the 1993 and 2002 events and LSU missed only the 1994 NCAA regionals and the regionals a year ago.
A total of 63 teams were chosen for the three regionals, which will also be held on the same dates at the University Golf Course in Normal, Ill., and the Stanford Golf Course in Stanford, Calif. The top eight teams and two individuals not among the top eight teams will qualify from each regional to the NCAA Division I championship finals at the Grand National Lake Course in Opelika, Ala., May 18-21.
Two other state schools qualified — the Southern Jaguars are in the East as the automatic qualifiers of the Southwestern Athletic Conference and Tulane qualified as the champions of Conference USA and is the eighth seed.
LSU is the ninth seed of the 21 teams in the East and is one of 10 Southeastern Conference women’s golf teams to qualify. Joining LSU in the East are Auburn (No. 2 seed), Florida (6), Tennessee (10), South Carolina (12), Mississippi (14) and Alabama (16). SEC champion Vanderbilt, winners of the tournament championship two weeks ago in Baton Rouge, is the number one seed in the Central Division with Arkansas 10th. Georgia is the number four seed in the West.
Duke, the No. 1 team in the nation and the champions of the ACC, is the number one seed in the East. Other teams not previously listed in the East include: Oklahoma State (3), Wake Forest (4), UNLC (5), North Carolina (7), Furman (11), Florida State (13), NC Wilmington (15), Miami (17), North Carolina State (18), Campbell (19) and St. Francis Pennsylvania (20).
The Lady Tigers are coming off a strong second place tie with Auburn in the SEC Tournament at the University Club in Baton Rouge, four shots off the 13-over pace of winner Vanderbilt. The Tigers lineup in the championships was a young one led by junior Brooke Shelton, sophomore Vicky Meyer and freshmen Alexis Rather and Melissa and Nicola Eaton.
“We are very excited about being back in the NCAA regional championships,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “This will be a challenge for our young team, but they proved in the SECs they are up for it. We like going to Florida for the tournament and feel we will have a good shot if things fall into place for us. The team has been practicing hard for this event and really look forward to the challenge.”