The UL golf team didn't care much about the travel inconvenience last week.
So what if the Ragin' Cajuns missed their flight home because of a playoff? The plane might have been overweight, anyway - it had to carry an unexpected conference championship trophy.
"We didn't mind being delayed for a night," Cajun coach Bob Bass said after his squad captured its first Sun Belt Conference title in a decade last Wednesday. "It gave us a chance to celebrate a little bit."
The Cajuns made up five strokes on front-running New Orleans (in fact, 12 over the final two rounds) and survived a sudden-death playoff with Middle Tennessee to claim the league crown at Walt Disney World's Magnolia course in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. The playoff kept UL from making its flight connections home, but the team arrived back in Lafayette one day later and a lot happier than its most recent conference tournament trips.
The win also extended the Cajuns' season. UL, with little chance of gaining an at-large bid to the NCAA regional tournament, claimed the league's automatic berth and is bound for the May 17-19 regionals.
The rest of the story
Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com