Sooner sports riding a big wave on Memorial Weekend
By Chip Rouse
With several Oklahoma Sooners sports teams and individuals standing tall and one of the few standing at all deep into NCAA Championship competition, this holiday weekend is shaping up as one to memorialize.
The Sooner softball squad completed a sweep of Auburn in the NCAA Super Regionals and is on its way up I-35 to neighboring Oklahoma City and the Women’s College World Series, where Oklahoma is the defending national champion.
But as they are wont to say in those late-night television infomercials, “That’s not all…”
The Oklahoma men’s golf team is competing among the best teams in college golf in the 2017 NCAA Championships. After two rounds in the 72-hole, 30-team championship field, the Sooners sit in second place, one stroke back of the 36-hole-leader UNLV.
The Sooners actually played one and a half rounds on Saturday, having to complete the opening round on Day 2 after delays on Friday caused play to be suspended due to darkness and completed on Saturday morning.
“We had a great day…and we have a lot of work ahead of us.” –OU golf coach Ryan Hybl on his team’s second-place standing in the NCAA Championship
Oklahoma ended the opening 18 holes at 4 under par 284, but it was over the 18 holes of the second round where the Sooners made their move. The OU scoring foursome fired a nine-under score of 279, the third lowest round of the championship after 36 holes. All five Oklahoma players (only four count in the scoring, however) shot par or better in the second round, led by junior Rylee Reinertson and sophomore Blaine Hale, who shot a four-under 68 and three-under 69, respectively.
Sooner sophomore Brad Dalke is in 17th place on the individual leaderboard, after successive rounds of two-under 70 over the par-72, 7,300-yard Rich Harvest Farms course in Sugar Grove, Ill.
“We had a great day,” said OU coach Ryan Hybl said after completion of the second round on Saturday. “We put ourselves in a nice position, and we have a lot of work in front of us.”
Pending the outcome of Sunday’s round, the Sooners are in a good position to be among the top 15 teams that will advance to play one final round on Monday. The top eight teams in Monday’s competition will go forward in a match-play format on Tuesday and Wednesday to determine the 2017 national champion.
A couple of Sooners also are still alive and kicking in the NCAA Men’s Tennis Championships this weekend. The OU doubles pair of senior Andrew Harris and junior Spencer Papa advanced to the national semifinals with a 6-1, 7-6 (4) win over No. 2 seed Martin Redlicki and Evan Zhu of UCLA.
“We played a great opponent today in UCLA,” Sooner head coach Nick Crowell said in an article published on the Oklahoma athletic department website. “Redlicki is the defending national champion from a year ago, so we knew it would be a great match.”
The Oklahoma pair is the first Sooner doubles team to advance as far as the Final Four in the NCAA Championships. Harris and Papa will take on the No. 4 seed, Wake Forest, in one of the national semifinal matches on Sunday in Athens, Ga. The winner of that match will go on to play for the national championship in doubles on Monday.
In advancing to the NCAA Tennis Final Four, the OU doubles team has defeated the No. 23, No. 6 and No. 2 seeds.
Alex Ghilea, the senior captain of the OU men’s tennis team bowed out of the NCAA Championship on Saturday after becoming the first Sooner to advance as far as the national quarterfinals in singles. Ghilea, from Romania, lost in straight sets, 6-2, 6-2 to the No. 11 seed, Tom Fawcett of Stanford.
Ghilea ends his collegiate career at Oklahoma tied for fourth all-time with 100 career wins, only the fifth OU tennis player to reach the century level in wins. He also is one of only seven former Sooners to receive NCAA All-America status in singles.