Ospreys will swoop west as UNF men's golf team is sixth seed in Rancho Santa Fe NCAA region
The University of North Florida men’s golf team may have finished a disappointing third in the ASUN Championship last week but they got a bit of a consolation prize on Wednesday.
The Ospreys will be the highest-seeded ASUN team in the NCAA regional tournaments May 13-15, getting shipped at No. 6 to the Rancho Santa Fe (Calif.) Regional near San Diego to play at The Farms Golf Club.
ASUN champion Lipscomb is the 11th seed at the Baton Rouge Regional and Stetson, which finished fifth in the ASUN, is the 10th seed at the West Lafayette, Ind., Regional.
“We knew the conference has been good,” UNF coach Scott Schroeder said minutes after finding out his team's destination at a watch party held at Cap's on the Water in Vilano Beach. “We expected three teams and we almost got four with Florida Gulf Coast. For us, sixth seed, is probably where I expected us to be based on having done this long enough.”
The Ospreys will play in their 15th NCAA tournament under Schroeder, the last 14 in a row. The top-five teams in each of the six regionals and the low individual not on those teams will advance to the NCAA Championship May 24-29 at the Omini La Costa Resort and Spay in Carlsbad, Calif.
Schroeder said The Farms, designed by Pete Dye, should fit with his team’s overall ball-striking ability.
“San Diego and the course is not a bad spot for us,” he said. “It’s a similar climate to Florida this time of year, the golf course conditions will be really good and it’s a narrow golf course, which should fit what we do well. We play a lot of narrow courses in Jacksonville and it should be a nice fit.”
Defending champion Gators land at Purdue
Arizona State is the No. 1 seed in UNF’s regional, followed by Washington, Oklahoma, California and Oklahoma State. South Florida is an eighth seed.
The defending national champion Florida Gators will be the No. 3 seed in West Lafayette, with Vanderbilt and Arizona ahead of them. Florida State is the No. 1 seed in the Stanford, Calif., regional.
UNF is heading for the West Coast for the first time since playing at the Stanford Golf Course in 2017. But the Ospreys are used to long travels and since then have played twice in Norman, Okla., New Haven, Conn., Tucson, Ariz., Lubbock, Texas and Eugene, Ore., in the past 11 years.
“We’ve been to Hawaii this year, and we’ve made other long trips,” said senior Robbie Higgins, who finished one shot out of a three-way tie for first in the ASUN tournament. “It will be fun. We’re all such good friends that we’ll make the best of it. We’ll get adjusted and everyone will be ready to go.”
Higgins and fellow senior Nick Gabrelcik will be playing in their fourth NCAA regional. Garbrelcik, who was named the ASUN player of the year for the fourth time on Monday, is the No. 10 player in the nation on the Spikemark rankings
Who else made the NCAA from the First Coast?
Two players with area ties qualified for the NCAA regionals as individuals.
Jacksonville University senior Alexandre Vandermoten, who tied for ninth in the ASUN tournament, is the ninth-seeded individual in the Austin, Texas Regional.
Will Davis of Jacksonville, a Wolfson graduate, who is a junior at Davidson, is the fifth seed at the Chapel Hill, N.C. regional.
Davis, the defending Jacksonville Amateur champion, was third in the Atlantic 10 tournament.
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: UNF Ospreys men's golf team gets ASUN's top seed for NCAA regional
