Rebel golfers swing at NCAA championship

Tuesday, May 26, 1998 | 11:08 a.m.

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. -- The UNLV golf team finds itself in an eerily similar situation heading into the 101st annual NCAA Men's Golf Championships.

Last year, the Rebels entered the NCAA finals in Lake Forest, Ill., as the No. 1-ranked team in the nation and the top seed in the 30-team national championship field, only to shoot 25 over par and miss the 36-hole cut.

As stunning and upsetting as last year's experience was, the Rebels are hoping to learn from that disappointment as they enter this year's tournament again ranked No. 1 in the country and seeded first in the championships.

"We're not afraid of what happened last year," head coach Dwaine Knight said as his team prepared for Wednesday's opening round at the University of New Mexico Championship Golf Course. "We decided to talk about it, to talk about the mistakes we made. It was definitely a very hurtful experience but we grew from it and for our team to come right back and get back in the same position, I think it shows the type of program and the type of players that we have."

UNLV has two players returning from last year's NCAA finals team, senior Bill Lunde and sophomore Jeremy Anderson. Both said the team plans to do things a little differently this week.

"We had a lot of distractions going on last year," Anderson said. "We had a lot of family and friends and boosters and all of that make the trip. We got to where we got caught up in that whole thing and we might have lost a little focus on golf.

"We have talked about that, we've talked about ways to handle it a little differently and I think we'll do that this time. There is going to be more of an emphasis on sticking with the team."

Lunde said the focus of this year's team will be more on golf and less on entertaining family and friends.

"I think there were so many distractions last year," Lunde said. "We had two seniors on the team and nobody knew what Ted (Oh, a sophomore who eventually turned pro) was going to do so everyone was kind of thinking that this would be the last trip for the year. So guys had girlfriends and their moms and dads around and instead of just playing golf, you were entertaining in a way.

"This year, we're there to play golf."

Anderson and Lunde will be joined at this year's finals by juniors Chris Berry and Charley Hoffman and freshman Scott Lander. That quintet has played together nine times this season and produced four of the team's school-record six wins, two second places and three third-place finishes.

The Rebels will be playing UNM's Championship Course for the third time this season. Last fall, UNLV finished tied for 10th (of 23 teams) in the William H. Tucker Invitational, then won the Ping Preview Invitational 10 days later.

"I think things are setting up pretty good for us," Lunde said about the Rebels' run for the program's first national championship. "We have played the course a couple of times and we had some success with it. Plus, we're well-rested going into this year's finals and our confidence is up."

Although the Rebels had won the NCAA West Regional last year going into the NCAA finals, Anderson said UNLV's third-place finish at the regional earlier this month actually may be a positive sign.

"I think last year we might have been almost over-prepared and overconfident," Anderson said. "I think the week before we practiced every day and we were going at it hard every day and I think by the time the tournament came around, we were almost burned out.

"In golf, you can only hold the top so long so maybe the best thing we could have done (this year) is not win the regional -- although we would have loved to win the regional. It's important to peak at the right moment."

Lunde said overconfidence shouldn't be a problem this week.

"Last year's team was such a talented team (that) I think we just thought our talent was going to carry us through there," he said, referring to the finals. "This year, we don't have the big names but it seems like everyone plays so hard. There has not been one tournament where anyone has given up, even if we're struggling. There's definitely going to be a big difference from last year."

Anderson, Lunde and Knight agreed that what happened to the Rebels last year was an anomaly in a program that has qualified for the NCAA finals for each of the past 10 seasons. Last year's early exit broke the Rebels' seven-year streak of surviving the cut at the NCAA Championships.

"We feel we have a great program and it's going to return us year after year to the national championships," Knight said. "We feel like (last year) was more of a fluke than it was something that normally happens."

"We've taken that, we're going to grow from it and we've come right back. Every year we've gone in there, our goal is to win and be competitive in it. We just feel the more we're there, then one of these days we're going to knock that door down."