May 10, 2004
ATLANTA – Georgia Tech, ranked No. 6 in the nation in the latest Golfweek/Sagarin Performance Index, has been assigned to play in the NCAA East Regional May 20-22 at New Haven, Conn., and has received the No. 4 seed in pairings announced by the NCAA Golf Committee Monday afternoon.
The East Regional is being held at the Yale University Golf Club, one of three NCAA regional tournaments held around the country May 20-22. The Central regional will be played at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex in West Lafayette, Ind., and the West regional is at the Crosswater Club in Sunriver, Ore.
Each regional tournament is a 54-hole event with a field of 27 teams plus six individuals not on those teams. The top 10 teams, plus two individuals not on those teams, after 54 holes will advance to the NCAA Men’s Golf Championship, June 1-4, at The Homestead in Hot Springs, Va.
The East Regional includes the nation’s top three teams (Florida, Clemson, Georgia), four of the top six (No. 6 Georgia Tech) and eight of the top 18 teams currently ranked in the Golfweek/Sagarin Index. Oklahoma State (No. 8) is the highest ranked and top-seeded team in the Central regional, and UCLA (No. 5) holds that distinction in the West regional.
The complete field for the East regional, in order of seed (national ranking in parentheses): Florida (1), Clemson (2), Georgia (3), Georgia Tech (6), South Carolina (12), Augusta State (14), Wake Forest (16), Duke (18), Tennessee (28), North Carolina (29), LSU (27), Georgia State (34), Jacksonville State (43), NC State (42), Alabama-Birmingham, Auburn, Vanderbilt (49), Georgia Southern (48), Penn State, Georgetown, Towson, Rhode Island, Maryland, Binghamton, Yale, Army and Long Island.
Since the NCAA began the current regional qualifying format in 1989, Tech has played in the NCAA East Regional every year except for 1996 and 1997, and has never failed to advance to the NCAA championship. The Jackets have been champion or co-champion four times, most recently at Settindown Creek in Roswell, Ga., in 2002, and been the runner-up three times.
Tech is coming off a third-place finish in the Atlantic Coast Conference Championship in its last outing in mid-April. The Jackets have played good golf over their last three events, which include a third-place finish at the Western Intercollegiate and a tie for fifth at the Atlanta Intercollegiate in March.
Tech’s roster includes a trio of all-ACC performers in Nick Thompson, a junior from Coral Springs, Fla., Chan Wongluekiet, a junior from Bradenton, Fla., and Roberto Castro, a freshman from Alpharetta, Ga. Castro also was named the ACC Rookie of the Year.
