Women’s Golf Picked Second In MVC Pre-Championship Poll

Duane Zehr

Live Scoring

Women's Golf 4/12/2019 10:15:00 AM

PEORIA, Ill. -- Bradley Women's Golf enters next week's Missouri Valley Conference Championship as the highest rated team in the conference in the GolfStat team head-to-head ratings and the Braves were picked to finish second in a vote of the league coaches according to a release by the MVC office Friday morning.

Receiving four first-place votes, Bradley totaled 83 points to finish second in the pre-championship vote. Defending champion Missouri State garnered five first-place votes and was picked as the favorite with 91 points, while Southern Illinois collected the remaining first-place selection and was third in the poll, five points behind Bradley with 78 points.

Bradley finished fourth at last year's MVC Championship held in Newton, Kan., and the Braves are the only team to finish in the top half at the league championship each of the last eight years. In search of its first MVC Championship since 2006 (held in Wichita, Kan.) Bradley has four Valley Championships to its credit for the fourth most in league history.

The 2019 MVC Championship will be held April 14-16 at the par-72 Sand Creek Country Club in Chesterton, Ind. Each day's round will feature tee times beginning at 8:30 a.m. BradleyBraves.com will provide links to live scoring for all three rounds.

Bradley's lineup features a pair of All-MVC performers from last year in junior Taylor Ledwein and senior Frankie Saban, who have helped highlight a strong spring season for the Braves. The Braves wrapped up the fall schedule with a second-place team finish at the MVC Preview in mid-October.

Ledwein was Bradley's top finisher at the MVC Preview in the fall which was held at Sand Creek Country Club, tying for fourth overall. She has finished in the top 10 in four of the last five tournaments, including the MVC Preview, and owns a team-best 74.27 stroke average this spring. Ledwein's team-best season average of 75.65 would rank fifth among Bradley season marks and is the third-best average in the MVC this season. Last year Ledwein tied for 21st at the MVC Championship after she tied for fifth in the 2017 event as a freshman.

Saban finished second to highlight last year's MVC Championship for the Braves, firing a career-best 68 in the second round. Currently second on the team and fifth in the MVC with a 76.26 stroke average, Saban has been even better this spring (75.45) and placed sixth at this year's MVC Preview. She enters the MVC Championship 11th in Bradley history with 102 career rounds played and owns a team-best five top-20 finishes in 2018-19.

Junior Megan Medinger will be playing in her first MVC Championship and has joined Ledwein and Saban as the only Braves to play in all 23 rounds this season. Medinger, who tied for 13th at the MVC Preview to wrap up the fall, is 16th in the conference GolfStat rankings and her 78.17 season stroke average is 18th in the league. Medinger has three top-20 showings this season, including her season-best finish of fifth at the Cardinal Classic in Yorktown, Ind., early in the fall.

The only tournament Brooke Thompson missed this season was the MVC Preview in the fall with the senior playing 49 of the last 52 rounds. One of four Bradley players to rank in the top 25 in the MVC stroke average, Thompson's season average of 78.80 is 22nd in the league. She was 38th at last year's MVC Championship.

Freshman Elyse Emerzian rounds out the Bradley lineup and is coming off her best performance of the season. Emerzian has played in each of the four spring tournaments and has been part of the team lineup in three of those events. Playing as an individual at last week's Jan Weaver Invitational in Murray, Ky., she tied for 25th overall at 14-over par 230. Emerzian has shot a season-best round in each of her last four rounds, capping the Jan Weaver Invite with a season-best three-over par 75.

Bradley's league-best score vs. par of +20.87 per round is a half-shot better than second-place Missouri State (+21.38). The Braves have finished in the top five of each of their last three tournaments and four of the last five with the lone exception during that stretch the team's first spring tournament at the Lake Oconee Invitational in Greensboro, Ga., in mid-February.

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