The Big West-champion UC Santa Barbara men’s golf team will head to Stanford for the NCAA Regional on May 15-17, the NCAA announced Thursday.
The Gauchos, which won the Big West title on Wednesday, are the 11th seeded team at the 13-team Regional which will be played at the Stanford Golf Course.
“I’m happy that we will be staying in our region to play,” said UCSB head coach Steve Lass. “This gives our parents and fans an opportunity to make the trip. It’s also a beautiful course and a great field of teams. It should be exciting.”
The host Cardinal are the No. 1 seed, Baylor is No. 2, Oklahoma is No. 3 and Georgia Tech is the No. 4 seed.
The remainder of the field includes No. 5 Pepperdine, No. 6 North Carolina, No. 7 North Florida, No. 8 BYU, No. 9 Houston, No. 10 Ohio State, No. 12 Sacramento State and No. 13 South Dakota State. There will also be 10 individuals playing at the Stanford Regional, including a trio from the Big West Conference: Felix Mory of CSUN, David Kim of UC Irvine and Andres Gonzalez of Long Beach State.
UCSB will be making its fourth NCAA Tournament appearance as a Division I program having previously made the field in 1994, 1998 and 1999, all under Lass.
The Gauchos are ranked 66th in the latest Golfstat rankings, which the tournament seeds were based on. Including the Big West Tournament, which was the program’s first league title since 1998, UCSB has won a school record five tournament championships this year. In the fall, the team won the Bill Cullum Invitational and during the winter/spring portion of the campaign it has won the PRO Compression Invitational, Wyoming Cowboy Classic and Cal Poly Shootout in addition to the Big West Tournament. The Gauchos have also won a school record three staight tournaments as it advances to NCAA play and they also have a second-place finish and a third-place finish to their credit.
“We’ve played consistently well this year,” Lass said. “We’ve been really balanced and gotten contributions from a lot of guys.”
UCSB’s five-man team at the Big West Tournament included juniors Zach Smith, Brandon Bauman and Willy Moffly, sophomore Nick Swanson and freshman Brett Bennett. The only other lineup possibility could be Matt Moomjian, but it is likely the same five that competed at the league tournament will make the trip to Stanford.