Cartersville natives Odom, Garren lead college golf teams into Sunday's third round of the NCAA

Two rounds have been completed in the 2017 DI Men’s National Golf Championship at Rich Harvest Farms in Sugar Grove, Illinios and all 30 teams are in contention for a top 15 finish after Sunday’s round.

A pair of Cartersville natives are coaches for teams in the Championship.

Bryant Odom is the head coach at Kennesaw State and Jim Garren is the assistant coach for Oklahoma.

With 36 holes completed, Garren’s Sooners are in second place and only one shot behind UNLV. Oklahoma shot 9-under-par Saturday as did UNLV. Illinois is third at 11-under with Auburn and Vanderbilt tied for fourth at 10-under-par.

Kennesaw State dropped five spots after Saturday’s round to 29th place. Odom’s Owls are 21-over-par.

Following Sunday’s 18 holes, the thirty team field will be narrowed to the top fifteen teams with a final 18 holes of stroke play on Monday. The top eight teams after Monday will advance to match play Tuesday with the NCAA finals on Wednesday.

Oklahoma had a superb day on Saturday.

“Today was awesome,” said Sooners’ assistant coach Garren. “We’re one shot back at the National Championship! We would have taken that to start the day.”

All five Sooners’ players shot par or better on Saturday on the par-72 7,300 yard Rich Harvest Farms layout.

Oklahoma’s Rylee Reinertson shot 68 to lead Oklahoma in the second round. Blaine Hale fired a 69 and Brad Dalke shot a 2-under-par 70. Max McGreevy and Grant Hirschman both shot Even-par 72s.

“Hole number 17 is a hard hole,” added Garren. “We had some mental errors on that hole and that made it even tougher on us. I’m super proud of our guys’ effort, however, we played more in the rain than anyone last night. We had a 4 am wake-up call and the guys absolutely got after it today.”

At the mid-way point of the stroke play portion of the tournament, Garren says the Sooners will try to do more of what got them to their current position.

“The game plan will be pretty much the same going forward,” the coach concluded.

Meanwhile, coach Odom and his Kennesaw State players have some ground to make-up. On Saturday, the Owls got a 2-under-par 70 from Chris Guglielmo. Termoana Beaucousin shot 75 and Jake Fendt fired a 76. The Owls then had to count a 79 from Pablo Rodriguez-Taber and Connor Coffee shot 80.

Play continues Sunday with tee times starting at 7:07 am CT. Oklahoma starts on Hole 1 at 8:13 am and is paired with UNLV and Illinois. Kennesaw State is paired with Penn State and Clemson with a 1:35 pm start on Hole 10.

TV Coverage:

Golf Channel NCAA Men’s Golf Championships Coverage (all times ET)

Monday, May 29

Individual National Championship

4-8 p.m. (Live)

Tuesday, May 30

Quarterfinals, Team Match Play

11 a.m.-1:30 p.m. (Live)

Tuesday, May 30

Semifinals, Team Match Play

4-8 p.m. (Live)

Wednesday, May 31