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Golf Claims 13th Straight NCAA West Regional Bid
National qualifier set for May 17-19.
May 9, 2001 STORYLINE: The No. 21 UNLV men's golf team, two weeks rested, returns to Oregon for the 2001 NCAA West Regional Championships. Hosted by Oregon State University, the tournament will be played at the Trysting Tree Golf Course in Corvallis, Ore. (7,060 yards, par 72), from Thursday, May 17 to Saturday, May 19. UNLV will make its 13th consecutive appearance in the NCAA West Regional, and the Rebels have never finished worse than fifth at an NCAA Regional tournament. Last season, UNLV finished second to Arizona in the regional tourney. THE FORMAT: The tournament is scheduled for 54 holes, with 18 to be played each day. Tee times will begin at 7:30 a.m. PDT. A practice round will be played on Wednesday, May 16. From each of the three regions, the top 10 teams and two individuals not already advancing will qualify for the NCAA Championships, scheduled for May 30-June 2 at the Duke University Golf Club in Durham, N.C. THE FIELD: The Rebels will face perhaps their most challenging field of competitors all season. Of the 27 teams selected to participate by the NCAA men's golf committee, nine are ranked among the top 25 in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Rankings, and five schools out of the Mountain West Conference were chosen. Joining UNLV in the field are: Arizona, Arizona State, Austin Peay, BYU, California, Colorado State, Detroit, Fresno State, Navy, Nevada-Reno, New Mexico, Oral Roberts, Oregon, Oregon State, Pacific, Pepperdine, San Diego State, South Carolina, Southern California, Stanford, Tennessee, UC Irvine, UCLA, Wake Forest, Washington and Weber State. Earning individual invitations were Scott Carlyle (Hawaii), Jeff Wood (UC Santa Barbara), David Hearn (Wyoming), John Mallinger (Long Beach State), Matt Bellinger (Denver) and Ryan Hanratty (San Diego). LINEUP: UNLV's five-man lineup for the NCAA West Regional Championships will be: senior Scott Lander, junior Clark Corbett, sophomore Calvin Kupeyan, and freshmen James Oh and Travis Whisman. As a freshman, Kupeyan was the individual runner-up at last year's regional at eight-under par. Lander also competed on the Rebels' 2000 postseason squad and tied for 66th at the regional at four-over par. HEAD COACH DWAINE KNIGHT: UNLV men's golf head coach Dwaine Knight is in his 14th season as the Rebels' skipper. During his tenure, UNLV has been a perennial top-25 squad, won five league championships, advanced to the NCAA Championships 12 times, and captured the 1998 national title. The only coach in the country to twice claim GCAA National Coach of the Year honors in the 1990s (1991 and 1998), Knight has produced 14 All-Americans and sent three players to the PGA Tour (Jeremy Anderson, Ed Fryatt, Chris Riley). MEDIA: Results of the NCAA West Regional Men's Golf Championships will be distributed to all regular UNLV media via fax following each day's competition. Daily results will be available on the world wide web at www.unlvrebels.com. Legitimate media interested in adding their outlet to the UNLV media list should contact men's golf SID Kevin Force at (702) 895-3134. LAST SEASON: The Rebels carded the best final-round score at the 2000 NCAA West Regional Championships at River Bend Golf Course in Madera, Calif., finishing with a nine-under, 279 to move from fifth place to second and claim their 12th straight bid to the national finals. Then-freshman Calvin Kupeyan led the charge, shooting his second 68 of the tourney in the final round to finish second overall, four strokes behind Pepperdine's Michael Beard. All-Americans Jeremy Anderson and Michael Kirk remained as steady as ever, finishing fifth and ninth, respectively. UNLV trailed Arizona by just four strokes for the team victory. LAST TIME OUT: In its last outing, UNLV battled the horrible Oregon weather to finish fifth at the Mountain West Conference Championships at the Crosswater Course in Sunriver, Ore. After soaring to 47-over par in the first two rounds, the Rebels rebounded with the best final-day score of any team in the tourney, finishing at two-over and climbing to fifth. Freshman Travis Whisman was the team's top player, tying for 11th overall at 11-over par. UNLV REGIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP HISTORY: Prior to 1989, UNLV had never qualified for an NCAA Regional tournament. The Rebels not only made the field in head coach Dwaine Knight's second year, but finished fifth and advanced to the national finals. Since then, UNLV has been a fixture among the nation's elite. This year marks the school's 13th consecutive invitation to the NCAA West Regional Championships. In 12 appearances, the Rebels have never finished worse than fifth, have won the event three times and finished second another three times. Individually, UNLV boasted three medalists in a five-year span from 1990-94 and have claimed the runner-up in three of the last four years. ATOP THE LEADERBOARD: For the second straight season a Rebel can be found atop the Mountain West Conference leaderboard. Senior Scott Lander is averaging 72.27 strokes per round this year, the best in the league. Last season it was UNLV's Jeremy Anderson, who was named the MWC Player of the Year after pacing the conference with a 70.85 stroke average. If the season were to end today, Lander would have tallied the third-best single-season average in school history. His career average of 73.50 ranks seventh on the UNLV list. LANDER NAMED TO PALMER CUP TEAM: Senior Scott Lander became the fourth UNLV representative to be selected to the U.S. Palmer Cup team since the competition began in 1997. Lander joins former Rebels Ted Oh (1997) and Jeremy Anderson (1998, 1999) as Rebel players with Palmer Cup credentials. UNLV head coach Dwaine Knight was also a Palmer Cup selectee, serving as the U.S. coach in 1997. The Palmer Cup is a Ryder-Cup style tournament that features eight of America's best male collegiate golfers competing against their counterparts from Great Britain and Ireland. The 2001 Palmer Cup will be played at the Baltusrol Golf Club in Springfield, N.J., on June 27-28. HONOR ROLL: Aside from his selection to the Palmer Cup team, Scott Lander received another postseason honor. He was named to the All-Mountain West Conference team after leading the league in scoring average this season. He became the third Rebel to earn such an honor after Jeremy Anderson and Michael Kirk were named to the team in the conference's inaugural year. Also garnering accolades was James Oh, who was chosen as the league's Freshman of the Year. YOUTH GONE WILD: With only one senior on the squad, the Rebels have counted heavily upon the play of younger golfers in the lineup this season. Freshmen Brandon Askew, James Oh and Travis Whisman have combined for 52 of the Rebels' 141 total individual rounds this season. Golfstat ranks the Rebels eighth nationally in a comparison of freshman contribution to the team. Both Oh and Whisman will be in the Rebels' lineup for the Mountain West Conference Championships. Oh has played in all but one tournament this season and ranks sixth in the conference in stroke average. Whisman owns the best round by a Rebel this year after firing 66 in the final round of the ASU Invitational. MIXING IT UP: Through 10 tournaments this season, the Rebels have used nine different lineups and have not fielded the same starting five in consecutive competitions all year. The combination of Lander, Oh, Kupeyan, Whisman and Davis played at both the Tucker Intercollegiate in Albuquerque last September and at the Mountain West Conference Championships two weeks ago. Only sophomore Calvin Kupeyan has played in all 10 of the Rebels' tournaments this year.
STREAK JEOPARDY: With the end of the 2000-01 season drawing dangerously close, the Rebels are in jeopardy of ending a streak of 12 consecutive seasons with a tournament victory. Playing one of the most nationally competitive schedules in the country, UNLV has both a second- and third-place finish to its credit, but has not captured victory yet this year. The Rebels have also had at least one individual medalist in each of the last 12 years, another streak in jeopardy.
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