Gophers golfers, the Big Ten champs, may be in toughest regional

It had to be a misprint. Of course.

Yet there it was, on the Gophers' and NCAA's websites. The U of M, which had won the Big Ten tournament led by co-medalist Jose Mendez, was the 11th seed out of 13 teams in the three-day Raleigh, N.C., regional starting Thursday.

Can't be. But, on closer inspection, it's true.

The Raleigh regional is loaded. The favorite ia Georgia Tech, the No. 2 team in the country in the latest Golf Week/Sagarin men's performance index. Only Alabama, the defending NCAA is ahead of the Yellowjackets.

And it doesn't stop there with golf heavyweights at Raleigh. Also in the field is No. 9 Washington and No. 11 Texas A&M. So three of the best 11 teams in the country.

The tournament will be 54 holes of stroke play, a round each day. The top five teams and top individual not on any of them -- will move on to the NCAA national meet from May 23-28 at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan.

"I think our region probably has the deepest field," Texas A&M coach J.T. Higgins said. "If you look at Minnesota being an 11 seed and winning the Big 10, Texas Tech playing great at the Big 12 Championship and the kind of season Mercer has put together, there are really eight or nine teams that feel like they've got a great chance to advance. We're going to have to play really great golf to make it to the national championship, but that is always the case this time of year."

They have those three powerhouses plus three more teams to contend with in the 30s in the national rankings -- No. 32 Mercer, No. 33 Kentucky, No. 36 Texas Tech and, just out ot fhe 30s, No. 41 Wake Forest.

The rest of the 13-team field: No. 54 Memphis, No. 55 South Alabama, No. 108 Rice and No. 174 Bethune-Cookman. The Gophers are seeded above the last two.

"We have guys playing great golf," Gophers coach John Carlson said on a YouTube video. "Anything can happen. ... [The course] sets up very well for our team ... as long as we can drive the ball well."

Besides Mendez, Jon Trasamar, who tied for third in the Big Ten meet, Alex Gaugert and Jon DuToit will compete in the regional off the conference championship team.

Freshman Grady Meyer won a playoff with several teammates for the fifth spot on the team.

If the Gophers survive the Raleigh regional, they will have a strong taste, up close and personal, of what the NCAA meet will be like.

Georgia Tech was 31-15-3 against top 25 teams. Tech's star is Ollie Schniederjans, rated No. 3 nationally.

"I like where we're going, because it's golf in the Southeast and typical of what we play on every day, from the weather to the grass," Tech coach Bruce Heppler said. "At the end of the day, no matter which one [regional] you're in, if you don't play well, you're not going to get out of there. So I'm not overly concerned with where everybody else is.

"We played a few holes [at the Lonnie Poole course] in the fall," Heppler said, referring to the regional tournament site. "It's a big place, and that suits us okay, too. We've got some guys who can hit the golf ball a long way. The best thing about this time of year is we're out of school, so guys can get their rest, and they can play and practice as much as they want."

Lonnie Poole is a par-71 course, 7,213 yards long.

Tech and Schniederjans both have finished first in the Yellowjackets' past three tournaments this spring.

Then there's Washington. The Huskies were Pac-12 Conference tournament runners-up to Stanford. They have advanced to nine NCAA national meets. Cheng-Tsunt Pan, their top player, was second in the Pac-12 meet.

Texas A&M had a tough SEC meet, finishing ninth. But junior Greg Yates of the Aggies tied for fifth.

There are three other conference tournament champions in the field: Mercer won the Atlantic Sun, Rice took first in Conference USA and Bethune-Cookman in MEAC. They all got automatic bids to an NCAA regional.

As did the Gophers, who are playing well although under the radar. Mendez, a freshman from Costa Rica and the Gophers top player, is rated No. 142. Minnesota is 1-8 vs. top 25 teams, 4-23-1 vs. top 25 teams. They have faced only one team in the regional, Kentucky, and lost.

They did edge No. 8 Illinois, the NCAA national runner-up a year ago, in a white-knuckle finish at the Big Ten meet at French Lick, Ind. The Illini and the U were tied with just a couple holes left. But the Gophers pulled away to win by four strokes.