College notebook: Middle Tennessee writes story of the year

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In a competitive sense, Middle Tennessee State was left for dead.

Its former head coach, Brennan Webb, departed for Tennessee last summer and took two players and all three incoming freshmen with him. The Blue Raiders entered the fall with just three healthy guys before adding two walk-ons and a freshman transfer. Some teams uninvited the depleted squad from their tournaments.

“We were gutted,” said new coach Mark McEntire, who came over from College of Charleston.

Yet McEntire still believed. On Aug. 25, the first day of classes, he texted his players in a group chat. His message was bold.

“He told us that we were going to be the story of the year in college golf,” said senior James Beckner.

He was right. With seemingly everyone counting them out, the Blue Raiders defied the odds and successfully defended their Conference USA title last Wednesday at Texarkana (Ark.) Country Club.

Middle Tennessee, ranked 114^th by Golfstat, finished second in stroke play to UTSA before beating the Roadrunners, 3-2, in the championship match to earn the league’s automatic regional bid.

“I told the guys, ‘Nobody’s giving us a chance, but I’m telling you, there’s enough talent here to get it done,’” McEntire said. “Lo and behold, we win the conference tournament.”

The Blue Raiders have certainly come a long way. They began the season without their star player, senior Marcus Byrd, who was recovering from a rib injury sustained in a car accident that happened earlier in the summer. Another key player, junior Ilari Saulo, ended his season before it started because of a broken wrist.

McEntire scrambled to find a full lineup. He added walk-ons Palmer Sadlowski and Josh Morris to a roster that only included Beckner, junior Tanner Owens and senior Graham Gosselin, and then got a third addition by way of Northern Iowa, freshman Jake Marvelli.

“We had to start at ground zero again, really,” Byrd said.

It was a slow build in the fall. The team’s opener was rained out, and weather shortened its third event to just 36 holes. In between, Middle Tennessee placed a disappointing 10^th at its home event.

“It was hard watching my teammates have to go through all of that on their own and not be able to do anything about it,” said Byrd, who was sidelined nearly five months and didn’t touch a club again until November.

The outlook for the spring was undoubtedly bleak. A repeat trip to an NCAA regional was looking more and more like a pipe dream. But then, for the first time in a while, Middle Tennessee started to catch some breaks.

The team added Vanderbilt transfer Cooper Sears during the winter break, and the sophomore shared medalist honors in his first start as a Blue Raider, at the Pat Hicks Thunderbird Invite. Then came Byrd’s co-victory at the Puerto Rico Classic.

“Adding those two was a game changer,” McEntire said. “It improved us anywhere between 30-40 shots a tournament.

Suddenly, things were looking up. Later in the spring, Middle Tennessee shared fourth at Vanderbilt’s home event, finishing just behind Tennessee. Byrd then closed the regular season with his second individual win, at the Old Waverly Collegiate.

“We were really close to doing something special and putting it all together,” McEntire said. “Once we got to conference, things just fell into place.”

While Byrd and Sears have been the two main catalysts this spring, the missing piece was Beckner. The senior entered the conference championship having finished outside the top 70 in five straight tournaments. His confidence was shot.

McEntire remembers talking to Beckner on the flight home from Bulls Bay, where Beckner had closed in 79-78 to finish T-72. With two events left in the regular season, McEntire knew he needed more from his senior.

Knowing Beckner, a gifted student, had never gotten anything worse than an ‘A’ in college, McEntire challenged his player.

“I told him, ‘Conference is where I need you; that’s your final exam. You have two more tournaments that you can use as an open-note test. Let’s try and get something that we can get going for conference,’” McEntire recalled.

Beckner responded, shooting 68 in the final round, tying for 17^th and then winning his match in the final, 3 and 1, over UTSA’s Chad Sewell.

“Coming into the season, I was kind of ready to say the heck with this year,” Beckner said. “I was ready to not even care. But after meeting Coach Mac and hearing the plans he had for us … he re-lit the fire under me.”

McEntire, with the help of assistant Kent Bulle (a Tour pro who is recovering from shoulder surgery), has reignited this whole program. He breathed life back into this team when all seemed lost. He got them to believe when they sometimes didn’t.

He and his players saved Middle Tennessee’s season. And now, that season will continue into regionals.

“You could see that these guys were tough and that they liked to fight,” McEntire said. “I will never have another team that will fight and can dig down any better than this team. These guys got hit with a curve ball, took it on the chin, and they stood there and came right back.”

Story of the year in college golf? You bet.

PASSING THE (REGIONAL) TEST

We knew this day would come.

When the NCAA committee reveals its regional selections on Wednesday, we will find out if the committee did what it has traditionally done and go straight off Golfstat’s rankings, or if it factored in unique disqualifications by Iowa and SMU.

The likely answer will be the former, which means the last at-large bid will go to the 60^th-ranked team and SMU, currently ranked 59^th, could be left out despite starting the spring as a top-15 program.

Is this right? There are two schools of thought.

There are those who believe the committee should not take out the DQs. There are rules in place and exceptions shouldn’t be made for just two teams, despite the circumstances.

Iowa was leading the Erin Hills Intercollegiate last fall when it had a player get injured and another get disqualified for playing a wrong ball in the same round and couldn’t post a final-round score. SMU was hit even harder after it couldn’t replace an injured Noah Goodwin in the first round of The Goodwin last month (the sub rule is only in effect for the conference championships and beyond). Freshman Ben Wong signed for an incorrect score in the final round and because they were already a man down, the Mustangs were disqualified and finished last in the 27-team field.

The ramifications go beyond just Iowa and SMU. While the Hawkeyes are guaranteed a regional bid, they will likely be under-seeded if the committee doesn’t factor in the DQs. This could be bad news for teams in their region. Also, Iowa and SMU aren’t the only teams who had their ranking affected. Every team that they’ve played this season were impacted.

A team such as Coastal Carolina, which played and lost to both teams, is ranked 67^th in the country, but the Chanticleers have what seems like a regional-worthy resume.

“Not only does our loss [to SMU] look worse to the computer, those other [12] teams [that it would’ve beaten] get the win against them,” Coastal coach Jim Garren said. “In essence, we took losses to everyone in that field [at The Goodwin]. Everything is skewed because of The Goodwin even and how big that field was. Now take all that and then realize it happened twice to us because of Iowa.

“… It’s just such a strange year that I personally believe in order to find the most deserving teams, we need to make sure all of the information is gathered and looked into.”

There are many that agree with Garren. Some believe that the committee should essentially throw out those two results in order to get a more accurate ranking. This would be unfortunate to a team like Missouri, which is near the bubble, but the Tigers also are the 14^th-ranked team in the SEC.

The NCAA has asked Golfstat and some coaches for information that would lead one to believe that they are looking into the situation with Iowa and SMU. But it is unknown whether these will use it.

In other college sports, particularly basketball, the committee doesn’t just go off the rankings. It factors in other variables. Even if some coaches don’t think exceptions should be made in this case, most of them are with the majority that believe the committee should be a little more comprehensive in the way it decides its regional fields.

HISTORY LESSON

Jon Rahm teamed up with Ryan Palmer to win the Zurich Classic on Sunday. The age gap between the two players is 18 years, which is why there was little surprise that the 24-year-old Rahm wasn’t familiar with the team’s walk-up song on Saturday, “Louisiana Saturday Night” by country singer Mel McDaniel.

“I had no idea [about the song],” Rahm said.

Music, though, has had a huge impact on Rahm. The Spaniard, who arrived at Arizona State knowing almost no English, learned the language in part by listening to rap music.

“Memorizing rap songs in English actually helped me a lot,” Rahm said after winning the 2017 Farmers Insurance Open.

Kendrick Lamar’s song, “Swimming Pools,” was a favorite of Rahm’s.

“Took me almost four years to memorize the entire song,” Rahm said.

Now, Rahm is one of the best young quotes on the PGA Tour.

SOCIAL LIFE

Wooooo, match play!

ON TAP

The NCAA women’s regionals begin Monday at four sites. Six teams will advance out of each regional.