The Kansas men’s golf team is back in the NCAA tournament for the seventh consecutive year.
The KU men will go into the tournament as the 10th seed in the 14-team regional that will compete at the Jimmy Austin OU Golf Club in Norman, Oklahoma. During play that runs May 15-17, KU will be seeking a top-five finish in the regional competition to become one of 30 teams that will move on to the championship tournament May 26-31 in Scottsdale, Arizona.
KU will be staring down several familiar competitors at the event. Fellow Big 12 program Texas Tech is the top-seeded team in the regional, and host school Oklahoma is the second-seeded team in the regional. Alabama, Ole Miss and Wake Forest round out the top five. KU golfers also could tap into a KU basketball rivalry, if they so choose. Duke is the sixth-seeded team in the regional.
KU comes out of a stacked Big 12 Conference that landed eight of its 10 teams in the NCAA tournament. Kansas goes into the NCAA tournament having placed fifth or better in five of the 12 tournaments it has competed in this season.
The Jayhawks put together a pair of back-to-back runner-up finishes in April, shooting 6-under par and finishing second at the Cowboy Classic on April 3-4 in Chandler, Arizona and finishing 24-under par the following week at the Hawkeye Invitational in Iowa City.
KU, though, could finish no better than eighth in the Big 12 Championships, held at the end of April at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson. Kansas finished 44 strokes behind winner Oklahoma and 26 strokes behind Texas Tech, two teams KU will be competing against in the NCAA regional.
KU is led by juniors Gunnar Broin and William Duquette. Both have shot seven rounds in the 60s this season. Broin’s best showing of the season was a second-place finish at the Hawkeye Invitational, where he finished 9-under par. Duquette’s best finish was a tie for fourth at the Cowboy Classic, where he shot a 6-under par for the tournament.
Other Big 12 teams, and their regional seeds, that qualified for the NCAA tournament are: TCU, No. 7; Texas, the defending national champion, No. 3; Kansas State, No. 5; Oklahoma State, No. 4; Texas Tech, No. 1; Oklahoma, No. 2; and Baylor, No. 6.
Also of note in the area, Kansas City qualified for the tournament as a No. 13 seed as the winner of the Summit League championship.
As reported, the KU women’s golf team also was selected to the NCAA tournament. That marks just the second time in school history that both the men’s and women’s golf teams will be competing in the NCAA tournaments in the same years. The last time that happened was in 1990.
