George Washington University Athletics
Golf Receives First NCAA Tournament Bid in 60 Years
5/8/2006 12:00:00 AM | Men's Golf
May 8, 2006
WASHINGTON, DC -- The George Washington Golf team received an at-large bid to compete in the 2006 NCAA Men's Golf Regional for the first time in 60 years. The Colonials will play in the 54-hole East regional at the par-72, 7,215-yard Lake Nona Golf Course in Orlando, FL, from May 18-20. The NCAA's three regional fields were announced Monday by the NCAA via teleconference.
"This is a very important moment for GW Golf," head coach Scott Allen said. "It means that all the hard work that this team, and years of previous GW Golf teams, have put in, meant something. Everything that we've done in the past was part of reaching this goal. We've proven that a relatively small, private school, with a limited scholarship budget and high tuition, high academic standards, limited access to facilities, in a major city in the northeast, can compete with the traditional golf powerhouses of the south. Everyone on the squad is looking forward to the oppportunity to go head-to-head with the `big boys' and prove that we can compete wtih them."
GW is one of five Atlantic 10 Conference teams to qualify for the NCAA Tournament. The Colonials will be joined in Orlando by A-10 champion Charlotte which earned the A-10's automatic bid and is the ninth seed, Rhode Island, the No. 22 seed and Richmond, the No. 24 seed. GW is the No. 23 seed in Orlando. Xavier also received an at-large bid and is the No. 17 seed in the Central Region in Cleveland, OH. The Mid-Atlantic Region, of which GW is a member, is made up of 50 schools and received four NCAA bids.
Each of the three regionals includes a field of 27 teams with the top 10 teams from each regional advancing to the NCAA Finals, May 31-June 3, at the Crosswater Golf Club at Sunriver Resort in Sunriver, OR. For ticket information to the Orlando Regional, call: 407/648-4900 ext. 18.
The Colonials are coming off a fifth-place finish at the 2006 Atlantic 10 Championship, May 5-7, near Orlando at Winter Garden, FL.GW is led by a trio of talented seniors in Brian Carroll (Crystal Lake, IL), Andrew Gallo (Toronto, ONT) and Dan Mirabella (Ann Arbor, MI). Carroll was named 2006 recipient of the J. Dallas Shirley Senior Male Athlete of the Year Award, GW Athletics highest individual award, earlier Monday. The last year the Colonials qualified as a team for the NCAA Tournament was in 1946 when they placed 12th.
The 2006 NCAA East Regional field (by seed):
1. Georgia, 2. UCLA, 3. UNLV, 4. Georgia State, 5. North Carolina, 6. Southern California, 7. Texas Tech, 8. Wake Forest, 9. Charlotte, 10. Coastal Carolina, 11. Auburn, 12. Tennessee, 13. South Carolina, 14. Florida State, 15. Indiana, 16. Notre Dame, 17. Georgia Southern, 18. Maryland, 19. Jacksonville, 20. Western Illinois, 21. Wichita State, 22. Rhode Island, 23. GEORGE WASHINGTON, 24. Richmond, 25. Liberty, 26. Army, 27. Binghamton.
