LOOKING IN ON:UNLV GOLF

By Brian Hilderbrand (contact)

Friday, Jan. 26, 2007 | 8:46 a.m.

Should the UNLV men's golf team be fortunate enough to advance to the NCAA West Regional in May, head coach Dwaine Knight will have done everything in his power to make sure his team is prepared.

UNLV will open its spring season Monday and Tuesday in what Knight hopes will be its first of five tournaments in Arizona in a three-month span.

The Rebels will play at the Arizona National Golf Club in Tucson later this month, return in early April for the National Invitational Tournament at Tucson National Golf Club and then play in a tournament in Tempe in mid-April. UNLV then will open the postseason with the Mountain West Conference Championship at the end of April at Tucson National.

Should the Rebels advance to the NCAA West Regional, they would return to Tucson National in mid-May. The scheduling, Knight said, was no accident.

"Our goal is to really concentrate on Arizona because the conference (tournament) is moving down there and the fact that we'll play three invitationals down there, including the conference and a good chance to play the West Regional," Knight said. "Our goal now is to look hard at the regional, with a chance to play in the West."

Of course, Knight realizes what can become of best-laid plans. Last season, after being sent to the West Regional for 17 consecutive seasons, the Rebels found themselves playing in the East Regional as the result of a first-year plan by the NCAA Men's Golf Committee to seek parity throughout the three regionals.

If the Rebels were to be placed in the East Regional again, Knight said, he is comfortable with the variety of tournaments his team played in the fall, including events in Ohio and Williamsburg, Va. - site of this year's NCAA Men's Golf Championships.

"If we go to the East again, we've been back there this fall and we've got a good idea of what we'll face back there," he said. "With the change in the conference coming (to Tucson), I just thought we'd kind of really bone up a little bit on Arizona and just be very comfortable going down there. If you look at our overall schedule, we had a good mix in the fall."

Knight welcomes back a seasoned team this spring that returns five players who saw considerable playing time on last year's team, which finished third in the conference, 10th at the East Regional and tied for 19th at the NCAA Championships.

Senior Ryan Keeney, juniors Jarred Texter, C.J. Gatto and Matt Kinsinger, and sophomores Seung-su Han and Blake Trimble figure to play the bulk of the tournaments for the Rebels, but Knight was quick to point out that he expects plenty of competition to determine which five players travel to each tournament.

"I'm really looking for guys to push each other," he said. "I think that's always been one of the hallmarks of our program; it seems like the more competitive it is at home, the better we do on the road.

"I think we've got a lot of different mixes in the recipe right now and I'm not sure exactly what that's going to be. I think that's good and I think that's healthy."

As usual, Knight said, the Rebels head into the spring portion of the schedule with one goal.

"We want to contend for that national title - that's always been right at the top of our goals," said Knight, who guided UNLV to the NCAA team championship in 1998. "Each year, the guys who come here, that's what they want to do, they want to try to play for a national title. I think this is a good team and I'm anxious to see how we break out.