BATON ROUGE — The LSU women’s golf team, ranked 12th in the nation in the latest GolfWeek/Sagarin poll, received a school-record fifth consecutive bid to the NCAA East Regional Tournament.
The bids were announced Monday by the NCAA Regional Championship Committees. The East Regional will be held May 6-8 at the University Club in Columbia, S.C. The top eight teams from that regional and the top 10 teams from the West Regional held at the same time in Houston will advance to the NCAA Division I Women’s Golf Championships in Tulsa, May 19-22 at the Tulsa Country Club.
LSU was the second seed of the eight teams chosen out of the South District. SEC Champion Georgia, ranked second in the country in the Sagarin rankings, was the top seed out of the district.
“We are very excited about making the NCAA Regional for the fifth straight year,” said LSU Coach Karen Bahnsen. “To make it with this young a team shows how far we have improved since the start of the fall. I said all along that this team shouldn’t be judged in the fall, but in the spring and I think that has proven to be true. We have definitely played some strong golf in the last few tournaments and we hope to continue that and get back to the Championships once again.”
LSU was 85-51-0 for the season against other teams, but 66-12 (84.6 percent) in the five spring events. LSU finished fifth in last year’s NCAA Division I championships.
It is expected that LSU will go with its normal lineup of sophomore All-American Katy Wilkinson (76.76 stroke average); juniors Lisette Lee (78.09) and Leslie McClurg (80.25) and freshmen Tina Howard (76.10) and Meredith Duncan (77.73).
The remainder of the eight South teams and their Sagarin rankings were: Auburn (14), South Carolina (15), Furman (19), Ole Miss (28), Florida State (26) and South Florida (27).
Advancing to the East Regional from the Midwest District were: Ohio State (20), Purdue (32), Indiana (24) and Michigan State (36).
The Mid-Atlantic East team included top-ranked Duke and eighth-ranked Tennessee. Also going from the district were: Wake Forest (22), North Carolina (30), Campbell (31), Memphis (33) and Penn State (48).
Among the individuals chosen to compete with a chance to go as an individual qualifier to the NCAAs were Tulane’s Pam Buff and Alabama’s Sarah Johnston of Benton, La.