For the second straight week, the Ball State University men's golf team had its best score in the final round of competition. However, it was not enough to place the Cardinals in top of the leader board.
Ball State finished 11th out of 13 teams at the John Piper Intercollegiate in Bowling Green, Ohio. With a three-round total of 923 (311,307,305), the Cardinals shot 59 strokes over-par. Mid-American Conference opponent Ohio University finished first with a team-combined score of 876.
"We weren't very good," coach Mike Fleck said. "You can sit here and say all the clichés that we weren't ready to play, but that wouldn't be the right thing to say. Our expectation was to be competitive and the total opposite happened."
Even though the Cardinals had three seniors on the five-man squad, Ball State was unable to perform at a high level.
"We played terrible from my perspective," Fleck said. "Let's face it. The bottom line is that we didn't play well."
Senior Andrew Rhodes was Ball State's top finisher, tying for 18th individually in the 75-man field. Rhodes shot a team-low 73 in the third round. Senior Brian Maurer tied for 38th place, carding a score of 229.
"This was just a disappointing tournament," Maurer said. "It's getting old saying that, but we got off to a slow start. It's frustrating because we have a great group of guys, but we have been sluggish during tournament play."
Fleck said he heard plenty of excuses from his players after the tournament.
"I've heard tons of excuses the past two days. If you start looking for reasons the way we played, you are coming up with excuses," Fleck said. "There was no excuse for our poor play. It was an embarrassment for us to go to Ohio with a purpose to compete for a top spot and for us to finish where we did. Everyone is playing the same golf course and everyone is under the same conditions. You can push on and adapt to the situation or continue to go down the road of mentally losing control."
Maurer said he agrees that excuses were used to cover for the way the team performed.
"I definitely heard excuses, but the bottom line is that we have to play good golf," Maurer said.
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