McCauley Selected for NCAA Auburn Regional

National

Seven teams from the Big Ten  received invitations to play in the regional portion of the 2024 NCAA Championships, but the University of Minnesota wasn't one of them. The Gophers finished ninth in the Big Ten Conference tournament. 

But the Gophers will be represented in the regionals once again by Bella McCauley, who tied for the individual conference championship last weekend. The sophomore from Inver Grove Heights shot a final-round 64 (8 under par) at Bulle Rock GC in Havre de Grace, Md., and came from six strokes behind to wind up in a first-place tie with Michigan's Monet Chun and Indiana's Caroline Craig. They all finished with 54-hole totals of 209.

McCauley, who is No. 73 out of the more than 2,000 college players listed by Clippd in the Women's NCAA Division I Rankings, will be in the Auburn Regional. It will be played May 6-8 (all of the regionals will be played on those dates) at the Auburn University Club in Auburn, Ala. There are six regionals in all, with 12 teams and six individuals in each. McCauley is seeded No. 2 among the six individuals at Auburn, behind only Furman senior Anna Morgan, who won her second straight Southern Conference individual crown last week.

Morgan is No. 13 in the Division I Rankings. 

The coaches who run the NCAA tournament care a lot more about the teams than the individuals, as can be seen in the qualifying standards, which are stacked against the individuals. Five of the 12 teams from each regional will advance, but only one individual. What that means is that for McCauley to advance to the NCAA Championships (May 17-22 at Omni Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.), she will have to finish ahead of the other five women at Auburn who will be playing as individuals only, plus all of the players from the seven teams that don't advance.

So it's possible for someone to finish second individually in a regional -- and not make it to the NCAA Championships.  

"I suspect that if the coaches really had their way," former Gopher men's coach John Means once lamented, "there wouldn't be any individuals in the tournament at all."

Nevertheless, in spite of the long odds, McCauley was able to make it through the regional and into the NCAA tournament last year. She finished sixth in the East Lansing Regional, and everyone who was ahead of her was on one of the advancing teams. At the NCAA, she got off to a bad start, opening with a 76 and then making a triple early in her second round. After that, she was even par, but wound up tied for 77th after three rounds. That's when they make the cut, and only nine individuals went on to the final round of the medal-play portion of the tournament.

The individual champion is crowned after 72 holes, and the top eight teams go on to match play. 

Even though there were a total of 72 teams selected for the women's regionals, and Minnesota is No. 60 in this week's team rankings, the Gophers were left out. That's because a lot of teams ranked below them won conference championships, and they got automatic invitations. One of those teams is Illinois State, whose roster includes Kira Wolf, a transfer from Minnesota. Illinois State is No. 138 in the rankings, but the Redbirds won the Missouri Valley Conference title, and as a result, they are the No. 11 seed for the East Lansing Regional.