Southern Illinois University
Missouri Valley Conference Championship
Southern up to fifth at MVC Championships
04/17/2017 | 8:43:00 | Women's Golf
The Salukis closed the gap between themselves and the top of the leaderboard in the second round of the MVC Women's Golf Championships, and have a chance to climb even higher up the leaderboard in Tuesday's finale.
Rain soaked the Dalhouise Golf Club all morning on Monday and set up tough playing conditions, which led to inflated scores for all of the teams competing. Southern used its familiarity with the course to its advantage and posted a team score of 319, the third-lowest score of the day, to move into fifth place on the overall leaderboard.
"We played pretty consistent in the early holes when the rain was pouring down. We kept the damage to bogeys or better. I'm just really happy," sixth-year head coach Alexis Mihelich said. "We showed a lot of grit. That's the type of golf that we typically like to play. We know that the harder the golf course sets up or the harder the conditions, the better we can play against the field."
Southern moved past Loyola and Illinois State on Monday to take over sole possession of fifth place. The team is three strokes out of a tie for third with Bradley and Northern Iowa and eight stroke behind Wichita State in second. Missouri State leads the tournament by 13 strokes.
Senior Brooke Cusumano turned in the best bounce back round of any golfer in the championship. She shot a 74 after yesterday's 81 to move up the leaderboard 19 spots to a tie for ninth place with Northern Iowa's Maddie Bertsch. Her round was highlighted by three birdies including two back-to-back birdies on holes 6 and 7.
"Brooke is mentally one of the strongest players in the conference. She's ranked the third best player in the conference, but I'd say her mental game is the strongest in the conference," Mihelich said. "She was pretty embarrassed with how she played [yesterday]. Knowing her character, she just wanted to go out and just kind of blow everybody out of the water. I think tomorrow she will turn another great round in and move herself into the top five."
The tournament's leader is Evansville's Kayla Katterhenry, who posted her second-straight round of 72 today; she sits at even par for the tournament and has a two stroke lead over Indiana State's Marissa Uradomo. Cusumano is 11 strokes behind Katterhenry, but just three from a tie for fifth with Missouri State's Verena Gimmy and Bradley's Taylor Ledwein.
"I think they got their first round jitters out of the way," Mihelich said. "Now they just need to close it and hopefully have a memorable last round. I'm looking for all of my seniors to have a memorable last round and finish their careers off strong."
The final round of the MVC Women's Golf Championships starts at 9 a.m. tomorrow at Dalhousie Golf Club. Southern will be in the first tee times off of the first hole.
Players Mentioned
