|
|||
|
|||
|
 |
|
|
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN GOLF MEDIA CONFERENCEApril 20, 2015Michael BurcinTHE MODERATOR: The men's golf team having recently won its first tournament since 2006 will also travel to Indiana for the Big Ten Championship this weekend. The 72‑hole tournament will be held at Victoria National Golf Club in Newburgh, Indiana. Head Coach Michael Burcin is here, and we will have an opening statement and then take questions. COACH BURCIN: Good afternoon, everybody. We are getting ready for Big Tens. We are go to leave Wednesday, Victoria National, which is in Evansville, the first year the event has been held there, so nobody in our league has been held there. They currently have a professional event, so it's a big‑time venue. It will be very, very difficult. Doesn't look like the weather is going to be ideal, so that should add an element that will make it interesting. We're very excited. We have had some really good weeks and some down weeks, but overall it's been an extremely productive year, in the process of getting better, and I would expect us to, you know, be in the mix this week. I don't see any reason why not. We're excited to go. We leave on Wednesday. Q. How thrilling it was to have your first tournament win in nine years? COACH BURCIN: Yeah, it was pretty cool. I don't look at live scoring when we're out there, so ‑‑ just makes me nervous. So I didn't know where we stood the first of day until we were done, and then I really didn't look until with about three holes left the second day. It was really cool. It was really neat for the seniors. We've got an interesting mix of seniors of two transfers, a player in Robert Jacobsen, who was here before we started, Thomas O'Bryan, who began his first year when we started. So it was really cool for those guys who hadn't had much success. I told them on Saturday night I said guys we're going to win tomorrow so get ready for that. They looked at me like, what are you talking about? Rob Jacobsen the next day said, "I'm glad that worked out for you, Coach, when you called that." I said, that's how you have to think. It was cool for them, and they were excited, and it was amazing from the amount of messages that we got from the alums, so it was really good for the program. It was fun. Q. What can a win like that do for you with momentum going into the biggest tournament of the year to the end? COACH BURCIN: Yeah, hopefully a lot! The guys know that they can win events now. We showed signs this past weekend at Purdue. We played well for moments and not well at other moments, so we're not as consistent as we need to be, but going back to these older kids, they've gotten so much better than when we first came, so it's really going to boil down to if they see themselves playing well and winning. I think they learned that firsthand last week in Indiana, that it's really what a lot of it boils down to is if that's what you see yourself doing, you give yourself a really good chance. We'll keep pounding that into them, and we're at a level now where we can compete with anybody, but we've got to be ready to do that. We're just not going to walk out there and do something. They will be ready. They're excited. Q. You talked about it a little bit, but how have you seen this team develop this year especially from the years past and specifically last season? COACH BURCIN: Yeah. Well, the older guys‑‑ it's a mix of ‑‑ like I said, it's an interesting mix of seniors who kind of have completely different backgrounds, and then we've got some younger guys, too, so I think I just read where three of the seniors are going to‑‑ if we stopped today would be in the Top‑10 all‑time scoring for the program. I think we're having the best per round stroke average, ever, I think. So it's been great.  We have had to do a good job of the guys of keeping them up, because we also have playing the toughest schedule that probably has been played here in a long time. We're putting up some great numbers and not seeing the results I think that they thought, you know. We've gotten so much better, and I think they at times have been disheartened with what it's not equalling, but I think it's shown them where we came from, when we first started this almost four years ago. So it's been fun. It's been really fulfilling for these older guys this year to have some success. I just want them to have a good week next week and leave with their names in the record books and that would be good for those guys. Q. Talk about Jack Watson. He was No. 1 the last two weeks and was Big Ten Player of the Week, and you have a bit of a string of conference players. COACH BURCIN: Yeah, Jack has been playing well. He didn't really start out the spring that well, but just played unbelievable. Made two double bogeys coming down those last two holes yesterday or he would have finished probably Top‑15 again, something like that. He's been great. He was another kid that transferred in, you know, kind of took a flier on what we were trying to do here, a Chicago kid, local kid. Yeah, he's been great. We've had a couple kids now just about every year we have had a player of the week, so I'm really happy for him. I think he's having a lot of fun, too. Usually seniors, when it gets down to the end they either go into, we're going to make the best of this or sometimes you have kids that get frustrated with the ends coming, and he's had the best attitude, the best results that he's had ever since he's been here, so I'm really happy for him. Q. Michael, I'm going to ask you to toot your own horn. How did you get these young men to buy into playing the way you want them to for them to be successful? COACH BURCIN: That's a good question. Well, obviously they're hitting shots; we're not doing that. In summary it's been a combination of discipline and not ‑‑ you know, discipline on the golf course. Just trying to get them to be efficient in how they work and how they get better. It's also been to try to get them ton understand how far they had to go kind of from where we started. What I hit on earlier, as many great things as we've done, we still have a long way to go. It's been great. I mean, I don't know if they have achieved more than they thought they could here or more than they thought they would. I had one of the seniors say, "I didn't know if we were ever going to win something here," after Indiana. So that was really cool. I don't know. Again, they're hitting the shots. We've beat on them pretty good and tried to get them to just work harder than they thought they could, especially with the older guys, so they've done a great job. It hasn't been smooth the whole time, but it's just neat to see them put up some of these numbers and it's really cool. Hopefully that answered your question. THE MODERATOR: Anything else for Coach? All right, thanks, Mike. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
About ASAP Sports •
FastScripts Archive •
Recent Interviews •
Captioning •
Upcoming Events •
Contact Us
FastScripts | Events Covered | Our Clients | Other Services | ASAP in the News | Site Map | Job Opportunities | Links |
|
ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297
|