Saturday, May 08, 2010

Greenville, N.C. - Freshman Alexandria Buelow (Palm City, Fla.) of the Stetson women's golf team shot a one under par 71 and catapulted 18 places up the leaderboard in the second round of the NCAA East Regional on Friday. Buelow is tied for 12th place at -1 overall in a field of 121 golfers, just four strokes off the lead and three strokes off the cut line for advancement to the NCAA Championships. The Hatters are tied for 20th in the team standings.

Buelow recorded 13 pars, three birdies and two bogies in the second round at Ironwood Country Club, making birdie on the par-four 18th hole for the second day in a row. Only 10 golfers in a field that features 29 of GolfStat.com's top 100 golfers (including 74th-ranked Buelow) bested that score today.

Scoring conditions grew significantly tougher in today's second round as 17 out of the 24 teams saw their team score rise from Round 1, including the Hatters, who came in with an 18 over par 306 total to move to +28 on the tournament. Senior Danielle Jackson (Seminole, Fla.) shot 76 and freshman Anna Hancock (Lakeland, Fla.) tallied a 79 while sophomore Lauren Cate (St. Augustine, Fla.) and senior Lauren Darnell (Gainesville, Ga.) each carded an 80. It was Jackson's second consecutive four over par round.

The top of the individual leaderboard shows a four-way tie for first at five under par among South Carolina's Katie Burnett, Duke's Kim Donovan, Pepperdine's Danielle Kang and Texas Tech's Rosalyn Kim with Nina Muehl (ETSU) and Erica Popson (Tennessee) one stroke back at -4. Currently, Kim and Muehl are in position to claim the two individual bids to the NCAA Championships reserved for non-advancing teams.

Third-ranked Duke, winners of five NCAA championships, surged into the lead thanks to an incredible 10 under par 278 team score in Round 2. The Blue Devils (-8) lead 18th-ranked Tennessee by two strokes and #11 Pepperdine by three with 18 holes left to play. Also in position to qualify for the finals are South Carolina (-2), #4 Auburn (-1), #15 Vanderbilt (+3), Tulane (+4) and #22 Florida (+5).

Stetson is tied for 20th place with A-Sun rival Campbell at 28 over par; the A-Sun's third squad competing in the NCAA East Regional, ETSU, is in 12th place at 13 over par.