(UWIRE) BATON ROUGE, La. — In his third season at LSU, coach Chuck Winstead is looking for his program to turn the corner and develop into a team that can compete with the best in the nation.
"When coach took over three years ago, the first thing he told us was he did not want to run an average program — LSU deserved to be the best," LSU senior Brian Noonan said. "Coach is constantly bringing in young talent. The facilities are improving, and the future of this program looks very bright."
When the Tigers traveled to Gainesville, Fla., for the Gator Invitational in 2007, the team shot 44-over par for the tournament and finished 12th out of the 14 teams in the tournament. In this season’s Gator Invitational the Tigers showed how far they have come.
This past weekend, the team returned to Gainesville and finished tied for sixth in the tournament, firing a 54-hole score of 13-over par.
The Tigers were tied for sixth with No. 8 Duke and No. 18 Wake Forest.
The top performer for LSU was freshman Andrew Loupe, who tied for fourth after firing a 5-under-par 205.
No. 14 Florida ran away with the title after shooting a 20-under 820. Duke’s Michael Schachner and UAB’s Zach Sucher shared the individual title, finishing at 7-under.
Despite the major turnaround from last year, Winstead is still looking at his lineup and working to figure out what mix of players will produce the superior results.
"We don’t go into a tournament with expectations to finish first, sixth or 14th," Winstead said. "With this being the first tournament of spring, we went in with a mindset to work on our game."
The development of the younger players on the team will be an important measure to see how the program grows throughout the next few seasons.
Loupe showed flashes of the talent the team has in their underclassmen. Loupe shot a 5-under par 65 on Saturday to grab the lead in the tournament before stumbling to a 2-over-par 72 on Sunday to finish two shots out of the lead. It was Loupe’s first top-10 performance of his young career.
"Andrew Loupe had a great weekend, his best weekend as a Tiger," Winstead said. "He is a very devoted young man and he really led this group with his level of play. I am quite certain he has a bright future ahead of him."
Joining Loupe in LSU’s freshman class are standouts Clayton Rotz and Jarrod Barsamian, together they comprise Golfstat.com’s No. 4 ranked freshman class. The trio combined for eight top-20 finishes during the fall season.
Noonan said the achievement of the freshman trio is pushing the upperclassmen on the team to get better and not get outplayed by their younger counterparts.
In addition to the young players that are already proving their worth, over the winter break Winstead inked Golfweek’s No. 4 2008 recruiting class. The three-man class includes the top two prospects in the state of Texas — No. 10 prospect Sang Yi and No. 16 Josh Jones.
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