LA Tech Golf Notebook: All-American Intercollegiate

RUSTON, La. - With five teams ranked in the top 40 awaiting the Bulldogs, Louisiana Tech is expecting a tough challenge when it tees off at the All-American Intercollegiate Friday morning in Houston.

No. 27 South Carolina leads a 16-team field that has five teams in the top 40 and seven in the top 65 in what will be the start of back-to-back tournaments featuring some of the top golf programs in the nation.

Houston (ranked 38th) and Rice co-host the 54-hole, three-day tournament at the par-72, 6,982-yard tournament course that begins Friday with tee times starting at 9 a.m. at the Golf Club of Houston. Another 18-hole day will tee off at 9 a.m. Saturday with the final 18 holes to be played starting with a shotgun start at 8:30 a.m. Sunday.

Louisiana Tech will be paired with McNeese State and New Mexico State when it starts on Hole 10 at 9:45 a.m. Friday with Saturday's and Sunday's pairings based on scores from previous rounds.

The Bulldogs are sending the five-man line-up of Victor Lange, Charles Neel White, Chuck Spears, Jake Pritchard and Ben Robinson to the tournament.

Tech is led by Lange, a senior from South Africa that entered the national individual rankings this week after winning the individual title at the UTSA Oak Hills Invitational in a playoff. That marked Lange's second career tournament of his career. Meanwhile Spears also recorded a top performance at the UTSA event as he finished fourth out of 84 total individuals.

Louisiana Tech will face three Conference USA teams in Houston -- Charlotte, Rice and UTSA -- with the Bulldogs having posted a 3-1 record against those teams this season with a 7-5 record against the field over the course of the season.

While the 27th-ranked Gamecocks are the top team in the field, four others are ranked in the 30s including No. 30 Arkansas, No. 32 SMU, No. 34 Baylor and the co-host Cougars while Charlotte, ranked 63rd, is the top Conference USA team in the field. Tech recently jumped 28 spots to No. 129 in the national rankings after finishing third in its last event.

Live results throughout the tournament will be available at BirdieFire.com and LATechSports.com.

For complete coverage of Bulldog Golf, please follow Louisiana Tech Golf on social media at @LATechGolf (Twitter) and /LATechGolf (Facebook) or visit the official home of Louisiana Tech Athletics at LATechSports.com.