Men's Golf | 2/18/2016 2:37:00 PM

Live scoring | Pairings
 

Tournament Name: SunTrust Gator Invitational Host: Florida Location: Gainesville, Fla. Dates: Feb. 20-21 Course: Mark Bostick Golf Course Par: 70 (6,701 yards) Format: 54 holes (36 Saturday, 18 Sunday) Tee Times: 8:30 a.m. shotgun both days Field: College of Charleston, Florida, Florida State, Georgia Southern, Jacksonville, Liberty, Missouri, North Florida, South Florida, UAB, UCF, UMKC, Vanderbilt, Winthrop

STATESBORO, Ga. – Georgia Southern men's golf coach Carter Collins tried his best to temper expectations before the fall season began in September.

"With that many new faces replacing that many established student-athletes that were here, losing eight really good players in two years, we said, 'let's work our tails off and see how quickly we can get to where we need to be," Collins said. 

The Eagles went out and showed they can get to where they need to be pretty quickly. They won the team title at the first tournament of the season, the Invitational at The Ocean Course.

So much for tempering expectations.

"We played really well in the first event, carried by two new guys, Cody (O'Toole) and Steven (Fisk), who finished in the top-5, and we ended up winning a really good event at a championship golf course," Collins said. "My challenge to them was, 'let's see what we can do from here.'"

Georgia Southern went on to post consecutive second-place finishes in the Sun Belt Preview and Cabo del sol Intercollegiate. The Eagles capped the fall by finishing sixth of 22 teams at the Kiawah Classic by Aramark. 

""We played solid in the fall," Collins said. "Getting a win at the Ocean Course was a nice confidence boost but we did a nice job of not getting complacent and competing every single week after that.  When you have this many new faces, it's nice to see some early success but we still have a ways to go."

Two newcomers, junior transfer Cody O'Toole and freshman Steven Fisk, led the way in the fall. O'Toole led the team with a 72.00 scoring average and finished in the top-20 in his first three events. His second-place outing in the Invitational at The Ocean Course paced the Eagles.

Fisk was named the Sun Belt Conference Men's Golf Student-Athlete of the Month in October after posting two top-10 finishes. He was second on the team with a 72.14 scoring average and placed in the top-10 in four of five events. 

Georgia Southern also got it done in the classroom, posting a 3.28 grade point average as a team.

"We talk a lot about excelling as a program academically, athletically and in the community, and it's nice to see the hard work they put in pay off," Collins said. 

Georgia Southern ratchets things back up Feb. 20, when the Eagles head down to the Gator Invitational at the University of Florida. The spring season provides an even bigger test for the Eagles, who will compete in five tournaments in addition to the Sun Belt Conference Championship in Destin, Fla., April 24-27. Collins says there are a couple areas that could use improvement.

"Course management was something that we struggled with at times in the fall," he said. "Just creating a solid game plan and sticking to it, and that's something we're going to have to do well in in the spring because we're playing some courses that require not just great course management but discipline in executing that course management. Having Coach Blake Adams on staff really helped speed up the development of these new student-athletes.  Learning from a PGA Tour veteran on how to dissect a course during a practice round and how to implement a game-plan with rigorous discipline was a big help for us."

The Eagles will host the 37th Schenkel Invitational at Forest Heights Country Club in Statesboro March 18-20. The tournament traditionally brings in some of the top teams in college golf, and the 2016 field will be no different.

"We have 14 teams coming in this year, and a majority of the field is ranked at a very high level," Collins said. "Most of this field will have a great chance of playing postseason golf, either in NCAA Regionals or NCAA Nationals. It's nice to have those teams in our backyard; it's going to be a very competitive week as it always is."

Georgia Southern will attempt to defend its Sun Belt title at the Raven Golf Club in late April. Only sophomore Archer Price and senior Andrew Klasing are back from the quintet that won that tournament, but the Eagles competed in the Sun Belt Preview at the same course in the fall so the newcomers have had the opportunity to play it. 

"We're looking forward to defending our conference championship at a course that we played really well at last year, and we finished second at the Sun Belt Preview so the new guys have shown they can compete at that course," Collins said. "With their experience and maturation throughout the year, I feel like we're going to be a different team in the spring than we were in the fall."

There will be a new wrinkle to the Sun Belt Championship this year as the schools voted to add match play to the format. After 54 holes of stroke play, the field will then be cut to the low four teams, which advance to one day of match play. Teams will be seeded one through four and will be paired one versus four, two versus three in a morning flight on Wednesday, April 27. The two winning teams from the morning flight will compete head-to-head in the afternoon match play session with the winning team being crowned the 2016 Sun Belt Men's Golf Team Champions.

"Qualifying for match play will be a challenge in itself, but we are looking forward to being fully prepared and competing in April," said Eagle men's golf coach Carter Collins. "We understand that to achieve our goal, we will have to go through a different format than years past but we have been preparing for this change since I first heard about the possibility of the changes last summer."

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