It’s crowded on UVa’s neighborhood block when it comes to spring sports, but one sport that gets overlooked a lot is golf. Both of Virginia’s programs have registered successful spring seasons again and are about to enter NCAA Tournament play. As the UVa Athletics Department pointed out last week, the Cavaliers are 1 of 9 schools to qualify both the men’s and women’s golf teams to the NCAA Tournament fields.
For the men, returning to NCAA play required a strong final round at the regional level. In order to advance, the Cavaliers needed to finish in the field’s top 5 slots and they entered the final round in fifth place, just one stroke ahead of Notre Dame. So how did they respond? With the day’s best round. The Hoos fired off a 6-under 278 to finish fourth and qualify for the National Championship event. Read about the regional here on VirginiaSports.com.
My favorite part of that article is this quote from UVa coach Bowen Sargent:
“We had a team meeting last night and I wanted to try and alleviate some of the pressure. I told them to look around the room. We had a two-time ACC player of the year (Ben Kohles), the ACC Champion (Ben Rusch), the ACC freshman of the year (Denny McCarthy) and two guys (Bruce Woodall and Ji Soo Park) who had just won U.S. Open qualifying tournaments. I told them to lean on each other. We have five really good players. They went out there today and got it done in what is easily our most pressure-packed round of the year.”
That quote alone shows how successful the program has been recently without much fan fare.
The same could be said of the women’s team. The Cavaliers made the NCAA Tournament field for the fifth straight time, one of just six teams nationally that can make that claim. The other schools are Alabama, Arizona State, Purdue, UCLA and USC.
Like I said. Impressive work from the UVa golf teams! Good luck to the Hoos in the NCAA Tournament events.
Hoo-Tube Video Of The Day
The Afternoon Break includes a daily video. With the golf theme above, this is a great video piece featuring UVa product Steve Marino. PGATour.com named this shot from the 2011 Sony Open in Hawaii the No. 5 shot of 2011. Marino finished second in the event.
Break Links
- Expansion. What else would the football board be ranting about? There is also a thread on Pam Ward no longer doing ESPN college football broadcasts.
- The EDGE board features a recruiting update thread on 2013 LB/S Oren Burks and a terrific conversation about the men’s tennis team.
- Tennis fans can follow the NCAA matches on the tennis board and there’s this thread on recruiting rankings. Talk about current Cavalier Justin Shane here
- Recruiting threads on the basketball board include one on Matt Thomas and UVa as well as Logan Aronhalt, a transfer for Maryland.
- Also in the basketball vein, there’s a thread on Monica Wright on the women’s basketball board. Wright plays for Minnesota in the WNBA.
- The baseball board has this thread on All-ACC selections. There were 0 Hoos on the first team.
- Check out the lacrosse board for discussions about the season-ending loss to Notre Dame and next year’s outlook. There’s this thread comparing the playing styles of Steele Stanwick and Connor Gill.
- Today, The Corner variety pack features threads on Richmond restaurants, Powhatan, and this long one titled “What is your most impressive pseudo-accomplishment?”
Daily Retweet
This portion of the break looks at TheSabre.com’s favorite Twitter retweet of the day. Follow @thesabre.
Today’s tweet comes from @MSchaub8. Matt Schaub is the starting quarterback for the NFL’s Houston Texans and, of course, a legendary UVa QB!
@MSchaub8: 1st day of OTAs today. Looking forward to building our team for 2012. #Texans
