NEW ORLEANS – With just a week to go until the second half of the schedule Privateer Golf has been hard at work on in the classroom, in the weight room, and on the course preparing to improve upon a very strong fall semester.
PRIVATEERS HAVE BEST FALL IN A DECADE
Privateer Golf finished a strong fall ranked second in Golfstat.com's Southland conference rankings – their highest ever Southland ranking. Through four tournaments, Lorio's squad have averaged a team score of 290.45 – a ten-stroke improvement on last season, and are on pace the best team score average in over thirty years.
HITTIN' THE BOOKS
Equally as strong in the classroom as well the Privateers concluded the fall with a team GPA of 3.222.
Thomas Artigas,
Brady Bennett,
Lukas Heckmann,
Nolan Lambert,
Florian Moosmeier, and
Brendan Winters all finished last semester with a 3.0 or higher.
A FAMILIAR SPRING
A strong Southland flavor permeates the remaining schedule with three of the five tournaments hosted by fellow league schools (Nicholls, HBU, and Sam Houston State). The Privateers should be familiar with not only the competition, but the courses as well. In recent seasons UNO has played on four of the six courses they will see this spring, including the Southland Championships.
HOME AWAY FROM HOME
The Privateers will co-host a "home" tournament with Nicholls at Diamondhead Country Club in Mississippi on March 2-3. Fellow Southland schools Southeastern and UIW will participate in the event along with Murray State, North Dakota, Prairie View A&M, Samford, Tennessee-Martin, and UTRGV.
PROJECTED FIVE (fall statistics)
1 -
Grayson Gilbert (11 rounds, 71.5 avg, 46 birdies)
2 -
Florian Moosmeier (11 rounds, 72.9 avg, 35 birdies, 1 eagle, 1 top five finish)
3 -
Ryan Fulton (11 rounds, 72.9, 33 birdies, 1 eagle)
4 -
Lukas Heckmann (5 rounds, 74.6 avg, 17 birdies)
5 -
Thomas Artigas (8 rounds, 81.0 avg, 14 birdies)
NOTES
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Grayson Gilbert finished the fall ranked No. 4 in the Southland with a low round of 66.
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Florian Moosmeier completed the fall ranked No. 9 in the Southland with a low round of 66. Moosmeier's 54-hole score of 206 to open the Fall was the second-best 54-round score in program history.
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Ryan Fulton concluded the fall ranked No. 13 in the Southland with a low round of 67.
- The Privateers ended the fall with four golfers ranked inside of the top 20 in the Southland, joining Abilene Christian as the only two schools in the conference to accomplish that feat.
- The program has shown consistent year-by-year improvement since the arrival of Coach Lorio before the 2016-17 season. During his first season, the team averaged 309.28 before averaging 305.41 in 2017-18, and 300.61 in 2018-19. This year's squad has shown a ten-stroke improvement through the fall averaging a team score of 290.45 in four tournaments so far this season.
COACH LORIO
ON THE FALL
"Obviously we had a really good fall. Probably the best fall here in almost a decade. We finished 14-3 against the Southland Conference, had a winning record overall, finished with the second-best stroke average in the conference, and played four guys individually in the top 20 of the conference rankings."
SPRING PRACTICE THUS FAR
"The weather has been a challenge thus far. It's been wet, cold and windy making for difficult scoring conditions. The good thing about it is that the weather has exposed us a little bit and shown that we need to get a lot better at facing adverse conditions. We will definitely face some adversity this Spring and the few weeks of practice couldn't have prepared us better."
SOCIAL MEDIA
Fans are encouraged to follow @PrivateersGolf on Twitter, @UNOPrivateers on Instagram, like /NewOrleansPrivateersGolf on Facebook and subscribe to the UNOPrivateers YouTube channel.
