Cowboys, Sooners move into match play; Bo Jin takes second
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Oklahoma State’s men’s golf team posted a closing 292 on Monday during the fourth round of stroke play at the NCAA Championship to earn the No. 2 seed for match play at Grayhawk Golf Club.
Oklahoma, second going into the day, dropped to fourth as Pepperdine moved into the third spot. The Sooners advance to their fifth consecutive NCAA match-play championship.
The Cowboys will take on seventh-seeded Vanderbilt in tomorrow morning’s quarterfinal match, which is slated for an 8:20 a.m. (CST) start.
The Sooners will face No. 5-seeded Illinois in the quarterfinals and the winner will face off later in the day with the victor of the match between No. 1 Arizona State and No. 8 North Carolina. If both OU and OSU win their first two matches they would meet in the final, as they are on opposite sides of the bracket.
The Cowboys entered the day with a 13-shot lead, but saw their cushion dwindle over the outward nine with Arizona State catching OSU through the middle of the round. OSU’s starting five could only muster one birdie over its first nine before rallying on the inward side to stay in contention for the top seed for the third consecutive championship.
OSU made seven birdies on the back nine, but ASU made 10 of their own to grab the top spot.
The Sun Devils were the only squad in the field to break par at the par-70, 7,289-yard layout over the course of four days. ASU finished at 3-under 1,117, while the Cowboys posted a 72-hole total of 1,120. Pepperdine, Oklahoma, Illinois, Florida State, Vanderbilt and North Carolina rounded out the group of teams advancing to match play.
Vying to become the program’s 10th NCAA medalist, Cowboy freshman Bo Jin came to the 18th tee tied for the individual lead. However, a bogey at the 18th gave him a closing 73 and put him one shot off the pace of Clemson’s Turk Pettit, who finished at 7-under 273.
The finish marked the third consecutive runner-up showing for Jin, who also finished second at the Big 12 Championship and the NCAA Stillwater Regional.
Jin was joined in the top 10 by sophomore Eugenio Chacarra, who closed with a 2-over 72 to finish at 1-under 279 to share eighth place.
Junior Austin Eckroat closed with a 73 to tie for 17th place at 283.
Sophomore Aman Gupta posted a 74 to finish at 290 and tied for 44th place, while freshman Brian Stark’s 77 tied him for 54th place at 292.
Live scoring is available at golfstat.com and television coverage will begin at 11 a.m. (CST) on Golf Channel.
The Sooners are the nation’s only team to appear in every match-play championship since 2016 and the program’s streak of 10 straight NCAA Championships is third longest in the country.
“Tomorrow we’ll start a completely different golf tournament with match play,” 12th-year head coach Ryan Hybl said. “We’re excited to be in this position like we have been for the last five years, it’s really special for our program. If we want to avoid going home tomorrow then we’ll have to come out and play great golf and execute.”
Oklahoma posted a 289 (+9) on Monday to close out the stroke-play championship. The Sooners’ 72-hole score of 1130 matches the lowest 72-hole score in program history, tying the team’s performance at the 2021 Big 12 Championship. Seniors Quade Cummins and Jonathan Brightwell led the way for Hybl’s team by tying for sixth place at 2-under and finishing with 72-hole scores of 278, good for second-best in Oklahoma history.
The round and moment of the day belonged to junior Logan McAllister, who aced the fifth hole en route to an even-par 70 in the final round. McAllister (T17, +3) closed his championship with back-to-back 70s to shoot up the leaderboard and notch the eighth top-20 finish of his season.
“I was pretty solid this week I thought,” McAllister said. “I didn’t make too many mistakes out here. If you’re in the desert you’re not going to score very well so I tried to be really smart off the tee and hit a lot of irons off tee boxes. But a lot of these holes you’re just trying to make par anyway so I think I did a good job.”
McAllister switched from an 8-iron to a 9-iron before taking the shot off the fifth tee and one-hopped the shot into the pin to notch the first competitive hole-in-one of his career.
“The pin location was kind of between the eight and nine iron for me,” McAllister said. “I switched at the last second and picked up the nine to try and draw it to where if it’s 10 feet right then it’s perfect, but then I overdrew it. In the air it looked perfect and I was playing with Austin (Eckroat) and he was telling the ball to go in. I was really shocked but it was a great moment.”
Brightwell (T6, -2) found himself in the bunker on the 18th hole but stuck his approach five feet from the pin and sank the putt for birdie to share sixth with teammate Quade Cummins. The redshirt senior, playing in his first NCAA Championship after transferring from UNC-Greensboro, has now accumulated 20 top 10-finishes in his career, including eight in his lone season as a Sooner. His 17 birdies were the second most in the field over four rounds of play.
Cummins (T6, -2), is one of three Sooners playing in their final collegiate event.,
Live scoring is available at golfstat.com and television coverage will begin at 11 a.m. (CST) on Golf Channel.