Augusta State’s men’s golf team hasn’t put up the results this year that it did in winning its national championship, but the players and coaches feel they’re poised again to do something special.
The Jaguars, whose only Division I sport is golf, knocked off top-seeded Oklahoma State last year to win the first NCAA title in school history. Augusta State, the fifth seed, clinched the match-play finals when a three-foot putt was missed in a playoff.
This year, the Jaguars will begin defense of their title at Golden Ocala Golf Club in Ocala, Fla., May 19-21. Regional pairings were announced on Monday. The NCAA tournament finals will be held at Karsten Creek Golf Course, the Cowboys’ home track in Stillwater, May 31-June 5.
Could there be an eventual rematch? Coach Josh Gregory said the team’s top five players haven’t played well at the same time, but they are still the seventh-ranked team in the country, according to the NCAA.
“All the pieces are there,” Gregory said. “We are close in every aspect. We’ve had two out of three rounds where it seemed like it’s been there. We feel like we can be the best in the nation when all the pieces are working.”
The team has been able to rely on its top two players, Patrick Reed and Henrik Norlander, all season. Reed is No. 7 and Norlander No. 14 in Golfweek’s rankings. Their talent will give the team an advantage should the Jaguars make it to match play.
Carter Newman and Mitch Krywulycz, the middle players, have been steady. But Gregory said they are looking for more consistency out of the fifth slot. Each player has had great moments this season, yet even in Augusta State’s only win in Myrtle Beach, Krywulycz said the team collectively didn’t play close to its best.
Unlike last year, when the Jaguars struggled in the tournament preceding the regionals, they come in playing well. They finished third at the Western Intercollegiate in California in their most recent competition.While not playing their best as a team, they have finished at least fourth in seven of nine tournaments this year.
To get a chance to play for the national championship, they must make it through their regional and finish among the top eight teams in stroke play in the championship round. Those teams compete in a match-play bracketed format for the title.
“In that regard it’s encouraging going into regionals because regionals are all about not playing poorly,” Krywulycz said. “It’s a positive thing that we’ve always had someone who could win the event.”
The team has another advantage. Even as the defending champions, the Jaguars say they haven’t felt extra pressure. In fact, the coach and players say the opposite is true. Because the championship came when most were juniors, they don’t feel like they have any unfinished goals in the senior year for five players on the team.
“We know we did it once,” Newman said. “It was great to do it once. I feel like it’s almost less pressure this year. We know we can do it. We also know we’ve done it once before. If we had finished second last year it would have been more pressure this year.”
That doesn’t mean they don’t want to win. They want to prove that the tiny school from east Georgia can win again and join the Houstons, Oklahoma States, Wake Forests and Georgias among multi-time national champions.
“You always want to validate,” Gregory said. “You don’t want people to think it was a fluke.”
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