It’s the last Colorado-based team left standing in college golf this season, but the Colorado State men’s squad rarely draws much attention on the national radar.
Only one school ranked in the nation’s top 25 has more team tournament titles this season than CSU’s four (Illinois), and the Rams have won their last two events, but they’re still getting the Rodney Dangerfield treatment.
They get no respect, no respect at all.
Well, maybe that’s going a little far, but considering the season the Rams have had, it’s easy to make a case they’re underrated.
CSU was recently seeded sixth in an NCAA regional tournament that will take place May 20-22 in Bremerton, Wash. Considering there are six regionals in all, the Rams fall somewhere in the 31-36 range among all the Division I men’s golf teams in the nation. That’s not very high for a team that has won almost 40 percent of its tournaments this season. Moreover, no CSU player is ranked among the top 80 nationally by either Golfweek or Golfstat.
When the point is brought up that CSU’s record — with a relatively difficult schedule — may warrant higher rankings, coach Jamie Bermel didn’t disagree.
“I feel the same way,” Bermel said in a phone interview this week. “I’m a little surprised, but I don’t do the rankings.”
But the thing is, the Rams have an opportunity to prove their point on the golf course. If they finish among the top five teams in the 13-team Washington field, they’ll advance to the NCAA Championship Finals June 1-6 in Chattanooga, Tenn.
CSU has qualified for the NCAA regionals 10 of the 11 seasons Bermel has been the coach in Fort Collins. Last year, the Rams came up six strokes shy of advancing to the NCAA Finals. And with four of the five players back from that team — seniors Riley Arp, Bryce Hanstad and Dustin Morris, along with sophomore Zahkai Brown — this would appear to be prime time for CSU to make it to nationals.
“This team is pretty good,” Bermel said. “It has two things: a lot of depth and experience. Of the top five players, all of them have won (individual titles) except Riley, and he’s finished second several times. Very seldom do you get that. The fact that our 4 man won the conference title speaks volumes.”
Indeed, junior Ryan Peterson (pictured) — the lone member of the travel team that didn’t go to the 2009 NCAA regionals — claimed the Mountain West Conference title over the weekend, becoming the first Ram to do so since Martin Laird in 2002. Laird won a PGA Tour event last year.
With CSU placing four players in the top seven individually at the conference meet, the Rams earned their second MWC title in the last three seasons, breaking the conference scoring record in the process. After also winning their previous tournament, the (BYU) Cougar Classic, the Rams will go into regionals on a high note.
Those two most recent victories not only give CSU four for the season, but an even dozen for the last three seasons. That many wins would be the envy of almost any school in college golf, and the three seniors on the team had a hand in every one of those victories.
“They’ve all played (regularly in tournaments) for us since early in their careers,” Bermel said. “More importantly, though, they’re great kids.”
While Bermel was just named Mountain West Conference Coach of the Year for the third time in his career, Arp, Hanstad and Peterson all earned all-conference honors in 2010 (along with Air Force Academy senior Tom Whitney). Over their careers, Morris has won two individual college titles, and Hanstad, Brown and Peterson one each. The only one who hasn’t claimed an individual crown in a college event, Arp, shares the team lead in stroke average this season with Hanstad at 71.66.
It should be noted that given what it’s accomplished recently, CSU isn’t being totally overlooked nationally. After winning the Mountain West Conference title, the Rams were named Golfweek magazine’s men’s college team of the week for last week.
Looking ahead, CSU will be playing its regional at a site where it’s already competed once this season — Gold Mountain in Bremerton, Wash. Its finish in the Golfweek Preview in late September was one of the Rams’ worst of the season — 13th out of 15 teams — but Bermel said his team “played pretty well except for the last nine holes.”
The University of Washington, one of the top programs in the nation, will host the regional.
“Realistically, we’re playing for four spots (in the NCAA Finals); chances are (Washington) is going to make it,” Bermel said. “But we’ve got some experience on the course. First and foremost, we just want to qualify (for nationals); whether we’re first or fifth doesn’t matter.
“We’re playing with a lot of confidence right now. Any guy on the team can perform well at any time.”
