MSUB golf men tee-off on spring season Monday

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT Evan O’Kelly Director of Communications O: (406) 657-2130 E: evan.okelly@msubillings.edu Saturday, February 25, 2017 MSUB golf men tee-off on spring season Monday

Kicking off its spring season Monday, MSUB’s men’s golf team heads to San Francisco for the 54-hole East-West Bay Area Invite.

BILLINGS, Mont. – Starting off a five-tournament spring schedule next week, the Montana State University Billings men’s golf team gets back into action with the East-West Bay Area Invitational hosted by Academy of Art University.

The 54-hole event runs Monday and Tuesday at Wente Vineyards in Livermore, Calif., with two rounds scheduled for Monday and the third and final round to be played on Tuesday. Live statistics for the event will be available online through Golf Stat here.

“We had a good fall, and put ourselves in a position where, if we have a few high finishes in the spring, we could see some postseason play,” commented senior captain Connor Miele during an interview at the 2017 MSUB Grad Fair live at ‘Jackets & Co. Campus Store on Thursday. “This weekend and our next two events are pretty important, and we need some high finishes to give us that potential.”

Miele and fellow senior Michael Porter lead a Yellowjacket team that logged 11 rounds during the fall into the spring season, as the squad averaged a mark of 295.7 through four tournaments and sits in fourth place among the six-team Great Northwest Athletic Conference.

Miele is third on the squad with an average round score of 74.9, and notched his personal-best low round score of 68 at the Rocky Mountain College Fall Invite. Porter is just ahead of Miele with an average of 73.4 after the fall, and he logged a pair of top-10 finishes and a team-best four par rounds for the ‘Jackets. Porter enters the spring No. 7 in the GNAC. Freshman Caleb Stetzner jumped out to the team lead with an impressive average of 72.6 in his college debut, and is currently third in the conference in scoring average. Stetzner’s fall was highlighted by a stellar round of 67 at the RMC Invite, and he made par in three rounds while posting a pair of top-10 finishes.

Sophomore Austin Walter had the best individual score of the fall with a 65 during MSUB’s record-setting round of 269 at the RMC Invite. Walter is fourth on the squad with a scoring average of 76.6 and one round of par or better in his first four events of the season.

Freshman Caleb Stetzner enters the spring with the third-best scoring average in the GNAC at 72.6.

Garrett Woodin, the team’s other freshman, was the fifth golfer for MSUB to compete in all 11 rounds of the fall season. Woodin posted an average score of 78.2, and logged a personal-best

college round of 69 at the RMC Invite.

Also slotting into MSUB’s lineup this spring will be sophomores Scott Larson and Dylan Meccage, who each participated in six rounds during the fall. Larson holds a scoring average of 76.7, and Meccage is also under the 80.0 mark at 79.0.

MSUB will look to build on its historic finish at Peter Yegen Golf Club on Oct. 2-3, 2016, when the team captured first place with a 13-under-par total score of 839 (269-284-286).

MSUB will follow with the Beaver-Jacket Invite, a tournament the school is co-hosting in Las Vegas from March 10-11 at Aliante Golf Club. Also on tap is the Yellowjacket Spring Invite at Lake Hills Golf club in Billings from March 27-28, and the Western New Mexico University Invite running April 3-4 in Goodyear, Ariz.

The 2016-17 GNAC Championships are scheduled for April 24-25 at the Coeur d’Alene Resort in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho.

--@MSUBSports | #JacketNation--