Alabama Women’s Golf: Tide advances to NCAA match play quarterfinals
By Ronald Evans
Alabama women’s golf finished stroke play at tied at No. 1 in the NCAA Finals. Competition continues with match play on Tuesday as the Tide faces Kent State in the quarterfinals.
The Alabama women’s golf team had a tough fourth round in the NCAA Finals. The Tide closed stroke play with a 299 team score. That score was 15 strokes higher than the third round team score of 284. After 72 holes of stroke play Alabama women’s golf was tied for first place with UCLA at nine-over.
Lauren Stephenson and Cheyenne Knight carded 2-over par 74 scores. Kristen Gillman led the way for the Tide with an even par score of 72. Gillman struggled on the front nine shooting 4-over. She came back strong on the back nine, shooting 4-under.
Three bogeys on the back nine cost Cheyenne Knight the individual championship. Knight finished at 5-under, trailing Jennifer Kupcho from Wake Forest at 8-under and Andrea Lee of Stanford and Bianca Pagdanganan of Arizona at 6-under. Pagdanganan eagled the par 5, 18th hole to pass Knight. That putt lifted Arizona to a playoff with Baylor for the eighth match play slot. Arizona defeated Baylor in the playoff.
UCLA will enter match play as the No. 1 seed over the Crimson Tide as No. 2 seed. The two teams were tied but the Bruins gained the top, match play seed, as a result of a pre-established tiebreaker.
As the two-seed, the Crimson Tide will take on the seven-seed, Kent State. Kent State was ranked as the No. 16 team in the nation going into the NCAA Finals. The Golden Flashes were led by Pimnipa Panthong who shot a four-under 68 on Monday.
Kent State joins Northwestern as the only teams in match play ranked outside the top ten prior to the NCAA Finals. The other teams are UCLA, USC, Stanford, Duke and Arizona.
Alabama women’s golf will need to regroup and re-focus after a hard battling the Karsten Creek Golf Course. The good thing for the Crimson Tide is match play is a totally different dynamic from stroke play. Based on the scores from stroke play, Alabama women’s golf should have an advantage in what is potentially three more matches. Of the top 10 golfers in stroke play, three are Tide players.
That is more top scorers than any of the other remaining teams. UCLA had two of its golfers in the top group.
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The Crimson Tide will tee off against Kent State at 7 AM CST. The winner advances to a semi-final match Tuesday afternoon.