News With Commentary by TSL Staff Thursday, May 31, 2001 Golf Team Makes Cut to Final Two Rounds The red-hot Virginia Tech golf team is tied for ninth after two rounds at the NCAA Championships and has made the 15-team cut to advance to the final two rounds on Friday and Saturday. With a two-day total of 585, the Hokies are 16 strokes back of the leaders, the University of Arizona. The Wildcats have a 569 and are outpacing #2 Florida (with a 574) by five strokes.
155 golfers are competing, and a team's score on any given day is the sum of their top four golfers (the worst golfer's score is dropped). Tech's top individual golfer is Brendon de Jonge, who is tied for 14th with a two-day total of 143, one under par. de Jonge, who had a quiet second half of the year, picked the right time to get hot again, and he has been Tech's most consistent golfer with scores of 72 and 71. He trails leader Ricky Barnes of Arizona (-11) by ten strokes. Barnes is five strokes ahead of a pack of four golfers tied at #2 with a score of (-6). The five Hokie golfers break out like this:
McKeel had a rough first day but came through in the second round with a team-best 3-under 69. The Hokies started on the back nine on day two, and McKeel bounced back from his bad first outing to birdie 16, 17, and 18, sparking Tech. The scores from rounds one and two carry over into rounds 3 and 4, so Arizona will be hard for the Hokies to catch. But on the first two days, Tech has had two golfers in the 77-78 range, and if they can get four golfers below 72 or 73 in each of the last two days, and if they get some help from the other teams, anything could happen. Please note: the scoring link included in the "Quick Take" on the home page and message boards has been corrected to a link that updates properly. The previous link was experiencing difficulty updating. To follow the action live on Friday and Saturday, click here. |