Another group of Buckeyes are hoping a visit to Tempe, Ariz. will end with the same good fortune the national champion football team encountered, as the Ohio State women’s golf team travels southwest this week for the NCAA West Regional tournament.

While the national championship title game is still weeks away, regional competition will determine who earns a ticket to the coveted tournament. But right now, the No. 16 Buckeyes are only focusing on their first hurdle, as they tee off tomorrow to begin the three-day West Regional tournament.

“We’re playing very well right now, and I’m confident that we will do well if we play up to our potential,” said OSU women’s golf coach Therese Hession, who was recently named Big Ten coach of the year. “If we keep doing what we’ve been doing at this level, then we can’t have a bad round. There’s not a team there that doesn’t deserve to be competing at this tournament.”

The Buckeyes, fresh off from claiming their second-consecutive Big Ten title, have faced eight of the tournament’s 20 teams during the regular season, posting a 9-9 record. Fifth-seeded OSU must finish in the top eight of its region to advance to the NCAA Championship being held May 20-23 in West Lafayette, Ind.

Entering as the No. 3 seed, Oklahoma State could pose the greatest threat to OSU, having defeated the Buckeyes in five of the teams’ six regular-season meetings – suffering its lone defeat at their last meeting. Ranked second in the nation, No. 1 seed West Coast Conference champion Pepperdine tops the field.

While five Buckeyes will be participating in the event, only the four lowest scores of each day will count toward the team record. This marks OSU’s tenth overall and ninth consecutive appearance at a regional tournament.

“We’ve been playing well all season, so I’m expecting to do well at regionals,” said junior co-captain Allison Hanna. “We don’t really worry about the other teams too much. We’ve been playing against a lot of them all year, so we know what we have to do.”

Hanna will be joined in competition by sophomores Kristen White and Lindsay Knowlton, as well as redshirt freshman Jennifer Selfinger and true freshman Allyson Harvie.

Hession, an 11-year veteran of the LPGA tour, has been utilizing both her career experience and familiarity with the par 72 Karsten Golf Course to prepare her squad for the conditions they will encounter in Arizona.

“I just want us to focus on what we have control over,” Hession said. “Golf is a very independent sport. You’re not really competing so much against other teams and players as you are competing with yourself, so to win we’ll really need to concentrate on the aspects of our play that we can control.”

The team held special practices last week to work on developing skills that will be useful on the unfamiliar Arizona fairway, which features plenty of mounds, undulations and elevated greens. The ladies added side-hill shots to their usual schedule of chipping, putting and short game practice to prepare for the rugged terrain.

After beginning their season with a second-place finish at the international Topy Cup in Tokyo, the Buckeyes went on to face competition in North Carolina, California, Florida, Texas and Georgia. The young team agrees that this year’s increase in national exposure has given them a taste of what to expect.

“We had a very highly-ranked national schedule this year, so we’ve already faced many of these teams and some other very impressive competition,” Hession said. “We’re not afraid of any of them heading into the tournament. That was the purpose of having such a tough schedule all season. We have a lot of respect for the other teams, but this way we’re not so in awe of them that we can’t play well.”

OSU is still flying high after finishing the regular season with a repeat win at the Big Ten Championship, where Hanna, Knowlton and White each earned First Team All-Big Ten honors. White, who is ranked 17th in the nation, was also named Big Ten Player of the Year.

As for earning an NCAA tournament berth, the OSU lady golfers are taking things one swing at a time.

“We’re just trying to get through this weekend and then worry about what comes next,” Selfinger said. “We have to concentrate on what’s in front of us right now before we think too much about the future.”