Alabama Women’s Golf Earns No. 1 Seed at NCAA Athens Regional
The Alabama women’s golf team will be the No. 1 seed at the Athens Regional in Athens, Ga., the NCAA announced Thursday morning.
The NCAA Athens Regional will be held May 8-10 at the University of Georgia Golf Course. The University of Georgia will be the host institution. The regional bid is the 12th-straight invitation to postseason competition for the Crimson Tide, which captured the program’s first national championship in 2012 at the Legends Club in Franklin, Tennessee.
The top six team finishers and top three individuals at the Athens Regional will advance to the NCAA Women’s Golf Championships at Rich Harvest Farms on May 19-24 in Sugar Grove, Ill., and join teams and individuals that will advance from the Albuquerque, N.M., Columbus, Ohio and Lubbock, Texas regionals.
“We were hoping for Athens simply because of proximity and familiarity,” Alabama head coach Mic Potter said. “The University of Georgia course is a great one. The greens are fast and undulating so you have to be precise and putt well when you play there. The course will play a little different from our trip earlier in the year for the Liz Murphey. We just need to do our job.”
For Potter, the regional berth marks the 24th consecutive postseason appearance by a team under his direction. The Hall of Fame Coach has now led a team to a regional bid each season since the current format came into existence in 1993.
Joining Alabama at the Athens Regional are No. 2-seed Georgia, No. 3-seed Northwestern, No. 4-seed Arizona and No. 5-seed Baylor.
The 18-team Athens Regional boasts two other Southeastern Conference teams in addition to the Crimson Tide and Bulldogs: No. 8 Tennessee and No. 12 Auburn. Other regional teams include No. 6 Wake Forest, No. 7 UCF, No. 9 North Carolina, No. 10 Clemson, No. 11 Augusta (Ga.), No. 13 Kansas State, No. 14 Michigan State, No. 15 Troy, No. 16 Princeton, No. 17 North Florida and No. 18 Quinnipiac.
Alabama finished sixth at the Shoal Creek Regional in Shoal Creek, Ala., last season before posting a seventh-straight top-15 finish at the 2016 NCAA Championships in Eugene, Ore.
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