The Cowboys golf team competed in Washington for the Mountain West Championship, which they wrapped up on Sunday, April 22, where they saw their best finish since 2002.
The Pokes finished with a team total of 18-over-par 882, which left them tied for fifth place among 11 teams.
“In our conference, finishing fifth is really good,” head coach Joe Jensen said. “I think [The Mountain West Conference] has 8 teams in the top-100 in the national rankings.”
Though the Cowboys ended up in a pretty good position, they did not finish as strong as they hoped for. They entered the third day of competition in third place and finished just one stroke back from fourth place at the championships.
“We really wanted to win, but we knew we wanted a strong finish, and we knew we could do that with this team,” senior Drew McCullough said. “We really just wanted to beat a couple of the teams there and give ourselves a chance to win.”
Though the team was unable to reach their goal, everybody is stilled pleased with the fifth-place finish and are optimistic for the future.
“[Our finish] says we’re going in the right direction, as a program,” McCullough said. “Everyone is more committed and getting their work done. It just shows that we’re getting better overall.”
Their best finish in 16 years was no fluke, either. The team saw success through the entirety of the season and hopes to continue that success into selection day for the NCAA championships.
“Fifth kind of summarizes the year, we had a good year, good conference championship– very competitive,” Jensen said. “My guess is that we’re going to have a very good national ranking come the end of the year, but it’s gonna be, probably just outside the selection of teams that will go [to the NCAA championships], we’ll probably be right on the bubble.”
Though Jensen thought a third-place finish at the Mountain West Championships may have secured them a spot in the NCAA Championships, he still thinks some of his team may have a shot to go compete one more time individually.
“Drew [McCullough] and John Murdock have a chance to get in [to the NCAA Championships,]” Jensen said. “Based on my analytics, those two should be in the conversation.”
Murdock, being a junior, will still have one more year for a shot to make the NCAA Championships even if he does not make it this year. McCullough is a senior who is counting on this as his last chance to compete at the collegiate level.
“[Seventeenth at the conference championships] wasn’t quite the result that I wanted, but it showed that I have a come a long way since my freshman year,” McCullough said. “But, it’s great to be able to contribute to the team every week. I just hope if we make the NCAA championships, that I can put together some good rounds.”
McCullough is not the only senior who contributed greatly to the program over the course of his four years, in fact, Jensen gives a lot of credit to all of his four seniors.
“From [the seniors], and I don’t know the stats, but I don’t know that any team ever has had three wins in a year, so these guys won three times this year, and they were ranked as high as 34th in the country,” Jensen said. “No doubt, in simple form, these guys, the [senior] crew, have left the program in really good shape. They had a nice career, every year the program got better.”
Not only were they good on the course, but they were also great in the classroom. Coach Jensen predicts that each of his four seniors will be two-time academic all-Americans. However, next year the four seasoned veterans will be replaced by four incoming freshmen, leaving the program’s future a little blurry.
