Lobos’ season ends in nation’s top eight

sports@dailylobo.com
@ThomasRomeroS

It wasn’t meant to be for the New Mexico men’s golf team.
A day after one of the greatest comebacks in team history — a jump from the 27th seed to surviving a four-way tie for sixth — UNM lost to Alabama 4-1 in Friday’s match play quarterfinals at the NCAA championship in Alpharetta, Ga.

“There was really nothing we did wrong; we didn’t play that bad,” head coach Glen Millican said. “Alabama is just a great team that played great today. They didn’t win seven tournaments this year because they were lucky. They just had it going.”

Sophomore Gavin Greene was the only Lobo to win his match play event by beating Alabama’s Trey Mullinax 5-4.

The other Crimson Tide players had no problems against the other Lobos. Alabama’s Bobby Wyatt defeated sophomore Victor Perez 2-1; Scott Strohmeyer beat senior Benjamin Bauch 4-3, the same score by which Justin Thomas beat Lobo senior James Erkenbeck. UNM senior John Catlin was defeated by Alabama’s Cory Whitsett 5-4.

“It wasn’t so much as a buzz saw; I ran into a freight train today,” Catlin said of Whitsett. “He played flawless golf. That can happen on any given day.”

Bauch said despite not winning the national championship, the team would’ve accepted the sixth place finish before the season
“I would’ve taken that in a heartbeat,” Bauch said. “Even coming into this tournament, we would’ve taken that.”

After Tuesday’s first round the Lobos were tied for 27th among the 30 teams in the field. UNM then worked its way up the leaderboard and after Thursday’s round was over the team was tied for 6th place with Arizona State, Texas A&M and UNLV. The top eight teams advanced to the match play portion of the NCAA tournament.

To determine which three of the four sixth-place teams would advance, a playoff hole was conducted with each team’s five players playing one hole with the top four scores counting. The Aggies finished a stroke behind and were eliminated from the tournament.

“No matter whether you play great the first two days or not, to finish in the top eight is hard to do — really hard to do,” Millican said after his team’s comeback on Thursday. “All the teams are fighting for their lives and playing great golf. It’s just really overwhelming that our guys did enough over three days to keep going.”