Can the Cowboys take another Big 12?

Morgan Hoffman, Kevin Tway and Peter Uihlein finished first, second and tied for fourth as Oklahoma State easily won the 2011 Big 12 Men's Golf Championship. Things won't be so easy in 2012. That trio of stars is gone and a young Cowboy team will come in needing to finish seventh or better to extend its amazing record of 65 consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances.

The University of Oklahoma will host this year's Big 12 Men's Golf Championship at Whispering Pines Golf Club in Trinity, Texas. Whispering Pines has played host to the Big 12 Championships three previous times.

Last season, Oklahoma State earned a Big 12-leading ninth conference title at Prairie Dunes Country Club in Hutchinson, Kan. The Texas Longhorns are next with three league championships, followed by Baylor, Kansas and Oklahoma with one title each. In 2011, Hoffmann topped the Big 12 Championship with a score of 280. The top-10 individual finishers each season are named to the Big 12 All-Tournament Team.

Talor Gooch leads the Cowboys into the 2012 Big 12 Championship.

The 2012 10-team championship includes some of the best teams and individual golfers in college golf. Top-ranked Texas headlines the event and features the top two golfers in the country in freshman Jordan Spieth and senior Dylan Frittelli. Rounding out the field is No. 15 Texas A&M, No. 29 Baylor, No. 30 Oklahoma State, No. 46 Texas Tech, Iowa State, Missouri, Kansas and Kansas State

Oklahoma State will look to win its sixth consecutive conference title. Whispering Pines has played host to the event three times (2005, 2008, 2010) previously with OSU winning all three titles.
 
The Cowboys will enter this year's event as the No. 3 seed and will be paired with No. 4 seed Baylor for the first two rounds. Play will begin at 8 a.m. on Friday with the second round slated to start 5 1/2 hours after the first-round teet imes.
 
OSU's lineup will consist of junior Sean Einhaus, sophomores Talor Gooch and Ian Davis, redshirt freshman Patrick Winther and true freshman Tanner Kesterson.
 
The Cowboys have won a league-best nine Big 12 titles since the formation of the conference in 1996. OSU won the inaugural tournament in 1997 and repeated in 1998. The Pokes claimed titles in 2000 and 2005 before their current run of five consecutive began in 2007.
 
The Cowboys have also produced the event's individual medalist on eight occasions with Leif Westerberg (1997), Charles Howell (2000), Anders Hultman (2002), Hunter Mahan (2003), Pablo Martin (2007), Rickie Fowler (2008) and Morgan Hoffmann (2009, 2011) all taking top honors.
 
Overall, the Cowboys have won 54 league titles and have produced 46 individual champions in the 65-year history of the program.

OU's lineup will feature senior Riley Pumphrey, junior Abraham Ancer, freshman Michael Gellerman, junior Will Kropp and freshman Charlie Saxon.

Oklahoma is led by its upperclassmen duo in Pumphrey and Ancer. The two has competed in a combined 59 rounds, earning 14 of the team's 24 top-20 finishes, and lead the team with three-top 10 finishes each. Pumphrey, who owns a team-best72.08 scoring average, earned season-best finishes of eighth place at the UTSA/Oak Hills Invitational and Linger Longer Invitational. Ancer's best finish came in the first event of the season as the Mark Simpson Colorado Invite where the Mission, Texas native carded  a three-round 209 (-7) for a share of fifth place.

Gellerman made an immediate impact on the program, participating in the team's first five events of the season. The true freshman's nine team events is second most on the team. Gellerman holds a 73.36 scoring average this season and earned a career-best 13th place finish at the Royal Oak Intercollegiate in Dallas in the fall.

Kropp has seen action in all five team events this spring and one individual event in the fall, recording a 73.78 scoring average and two top-20 finishes.

Saxon secured his place in the championship lineup at the Aggie Invitational last week with a seventh-place finish. Like Gellerman, Saxon made early contributions to the program, participating in the first three events of the season.

Oklahoma will be paired with Texas Tech for the first two rounds, teeing off at 8:45 a.m. CT from the first hole and at 2:15 p.m. from the 10th. Live scoring will be available on Golfstat.com.
 

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