The ASU women’s golf team is in Boulder, Colorado, for the 2015 Pac-12 women’s golf championships as ASU looks to add a ninth conference championship to its trophy case and extend its current record for conference titles.
Coming off a second place finish in the PING/ASU Invitational, the Sun Devils will enter the conference tournament as the No. 5 seed.
The Sun Devils will be teeing off from the 10th tee at the Boulder Country Club on Monday along with the No. 7 seed Oregon and the No. 8 seed California. ASU will start on the first tee for the second and third rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Pac-12 conference tournament may be the most difficult in women’s college golf with four of the top-10 teams in the nation. Golfstat rankings include the No. 1 USC, No. 3 UCLA, No. 6 Arizona and No. 7 Washington. In the most recent rankings, the Sun Devils came in at No. 18.
The Sun Devils will need great rounds from their best two players, senior Noemi Jimenez and sophomore Monica Vaughn, who have played at a consistent level for the last month of the regular season.
Vaughn is coming off of her first tournament win of her Sun Devil career at the PING/ASU Invitational with a 6-under 210 sharing the title with Texas’ Bertine Strauss. That tied her best tournament score of her career after shooting 6-under at the Pac-12 Preview last season as a freshman. Vaughn shot a 1-over 217 at last year’s Pac-12 tournament and finished in fifth place.
Jimenez is ASU’s most veteran player in this tournament and is playing in her last Pac-12 Championship. She placed fourth at the tournament last year shooting even over three rounds. She has placed in the top-10 four times this season including three top-five finishes.
As a team at last year’s conference tournament, the Sun Devils finished in fifth place with a 19-over 883. The Stanford was the surprise winner at the tournament last year in Corvallis, beating out Arizona and USC by one stroke with a 5-over 869.
At this season’s Pac-12 Preview in Hawaii, the Sun Devils finished in the same spot as the previous year’s conference tournament finishing with a 16-over 892. Washington was the only team to finish under par at the event so the No. 3 seed might be a dark horse favorite to win the conference tournament.
If the Sun Devils can win the tournament this week, it will be the ninth conference title for the program, they already hold the most conference titles with eighth.
Another side story at the Pac-12 championships is the Territorial Cup point that will be up for grabs. The conference tournament serves as the Territorial Cup point for women’s golf so if the team can’t win the event they will at least look to finish ahead of their rivals from Tucson.
The first two rounds of the Pac-12 championships will be broadcast live on the Pac-12 Networks starting Monday morning.
Reach the reporter at wslane@asu.edu or follow @bill_slane on Twitter.
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