UNLV’s women’s golf team is headed to Ohio it its quest for an NCAA Tournament berth.
The Rebels are the seventh seed at OSU Golf Club in Columbus, one of six regionals to be played May 5 to 7. The top five teams for each regional will advance to the national championship May 16 to 21 at La Costa Resort in Carlsbad, California.
UNLV’s regional is topped by Arkansas, the No. 2 team in the nation, No. 10 LSU and No. 14 Ohio State, which will be playing on its home course. One of the top players for the Razorbacks is senior Kendall Todd, who played her first two seasons at UNLV.
Other schools in the Columbus region include No. 23 Kansas, No. 26 Houston, No. 35 SMU and No. 47 Illinois, as well as four schools that earned automatic bids by winning their conference championships: Kent State (MAC), Illinois State (Missouri Valley), Xavier (Big East) and Oakland (Horizon).
The Rebels, the Mountain West champions, are ranked 39th in the nation after a season in which they won twice and had five second-place finishes in 10 tournaments.
UNLV coach Amy Bush-Herzer said preparation over the next 10 days will include forcing her golfers to play with distractions, purposely dropping items and talking loudly during their backswings, things that tend to happen to players as the stakes get higher.
“We want to help them adapt and work the nerves out of them a little bit,” she said.
The tournament will feature more spectators and media, along with people that don’t normally travel with the team. Those changes can take some players out of their comfort zones, Bush-Herzer said.
“We’ll just be making sure they are comfortable and ready,” she said.
The Rebels expect to use the same lineup that has worked well for most of the season, featuring seniors McKenzi Hall, Hina Matsui, Mayumi Umezu and Toa Yokoyama, along with sophomore Zi Yu Foong. All five have made major contributions throughout the year. Bush-Herzer expects more of the same in Ohio.
“It’s been a beautiful year,” she said. “All of the stars are aligning.”
Other top seeds in regionals include defending national champion Stanford (Norman, Oklahoma), Florida State (Lexington, Kentucky), South Carolina (Charlottesville, Virginia), Texas (Lubbock, Texas) and Oregon (Gold Canyon, Arizona).
San Francisco senior Riana Mission, a Las Vegas native who starred at Clark High, earned an at-large individual berth. Mission won her first two starts of the season in the fall and is ranked 73rd in the nation.
Greg Robertson covers golf for the Review-Journal. He can be reached at [email protected].
