TUCSON, Ariz. - In golf terms, Saturday morning for the Louisiana Tech golf team started out with a strong hook into a hazard but recovered nicely by getting up-and-down to save par.

A regional plane was scheduled to leave the Monroe Airport at approximately 6:46 a.m. Air traffic and Mother Nature had other plans.

After a 20-minute wait on the runway for the squad, chipper and anxious to start their route to further make history at the NCAA Regional out west in Tucson, Arizona, the plane took flight.

Instead of a piped tee shot due west to Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, a weather system forced a reroute to the north which added an extra half hour of air time.

By the time the 2016 C-USA Champions got inside the terminal the clock struck 8:45 a.m. There was only one problem. The connecting flight was scheduled to depart at 8:50 a.m.

With a bunch of worst case scenarios creeping in, the tardiness turned out to be not such a bad thing after all. All five golfers, two staff members and a head coach got bumped to a flight set to take off at 10:20 a.m. which gave everyone just enough time to relax and eat breakfast (or lunch No. 1 since their bodies had been awake for almost five hours already) while also watching coverage of The Players Championship.

Another two hours high in the sky and the squad found themselves dropped off in the desert, exactly where they wanted to be to compete against the some of the best collegiate golfers in the nation.

Lunch No. 1 or No. 2, depending upon the previous meal order, was scarfed down before making a half-hour drive through harsh vegetation and terrain to the exquisite Golf Club at Dove Mountain.

Dressed sharply in matching entire -- solid blue LA Tech polo with blacked-out shorts, belt, shoes and hat -- that was selected by senior Chuck Spears, the team spent roughly an hour practicing at the practice range and putting green before playing nine holes amid temperatures approaching 100 degrees.

The dry air and low humidity made for some much-needed adjustments to the team's golf game. So much so that Spears torched a driver 385 yards on a par four to which head coach Jeff Jenkins later replied, "Welcome to Arizona."

While Spears and the three other players -- Victor Lange, Ben Robinson and Jacob Wyatt -- spent some extra time on the range afterwards, Jenkins and Luke Neeley participated in a friendly chipping game.

Jenkins came out on top, running a chip down perfectly down a slope to within one foot for a winning shot that would have been a great up-and-down save. And for a day that started out that could have easily gone bogey, double bogey, or even triple bogey, it turned out to be a much-needed par.

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