It took an almost perfect round on Monday for the Oklahoma men’s golf team to remain alive when the NCAA Championship field was trimmed to a final eight teams.
The five-man Sooner squad narrowly made the cut for the final day of 18-hole match play on Monday, finishing in a tie for 14th, and it faced an enormous uphill challenge on Sunday to qualify as one of the eight teams, out of the 30-team field, for the match-play competition and the final stage of the national championship format.
OU won’t have much time to celebrate its Memorial Day accolades, however, as the Sooners are paired against Big 12 champion Texas on the first day of match play on Tuesday. The Longhorns hold the No. 2 seed in the tournament and finished first in stroke play with a 72-hole score of 14-over-par 1139.
Junior Max McGreevy and freshman Brad Dalke led a Sooner onslaught on the final day of stroke play, firing 18-hole scores of four-under-par 66 and two-under 68, respectively. Oklahoma’s three-under team score of 277 matched the second best team score for 18 holes of the 30 teams competing in this year’s NCAA Championship being held at the Eugene (Ore.) Country Club.
The Sooners 24-over-par team score for the four rounds of stroke play moved them up eight places, from a tie for 14th after 54 holes to the eighth and final spot as the final eight teams enter the match-play phase of the championship.
This is the first time the OU men’s golf team has made it into match play since the dual format was introduced into the NCAA Championship in 2009. The Sooners were the No. 18 national seed entering this year’s championship after finishing fourth in the Big 12 Championship.
McGreevy and Dalke were also the highest OU finishers on the NCAA individual leaderboard after the 72 holes of stroke play. McGreevy and Dalke shared 26th place with four-round scores of plus-seven 287.
For those Sooner fans who may not have been keeping close track of how Oklahoma has fared on the national stage in spring sports, this makes the third Sooner team during the spring sports season – and fifth if you count men’s and women’s gymnastics – to advance as far as the final eight or better in NCAA Championship.
That is something that the Sooner Nation can and should be extremely proud of.