Photo courtesy of UMHB Athletics
BELTON — On a Saturday evening this past fall, Jordan Cox looked around at his team sitting in the hotel between the first and second rounds of the UMHB Invitational.
Several hours before, on the course at the Nutcracker Golf Club in Granbury, these players had set a new 18-hole program record, dominating the five-team field and finishing one stroke below the previous top mark, set by the ASC title-winning 2021-22 squad. They were in peak form, and Cox thought about the message to deliver heading into Round Two.
What do you tell a group of players after they perform at that level, sitting in first place with a 32-stroke lead?
Amongst the conversation about finishing the tournament strong, he asked a simple question, and let his players do the talking.
“I said, ‘I’m curious. If you’re the coach, what do you say to your team right now? If you’re sitting in my place, what do you say?’ I wanted to see where their heads were,” Cox, in his 10th season as UMHB’s head coach, recalled. “A couple of them were like, ‘Well, that was today. And we’ve got to go prove it again tomorrow.’
“To me, I think that shows some maturation beyond the classification. And it’s not just the young ones; it’s all of them. But I think that shows some maturation for them as a group that that’s the way they’re consuming and approaching things right now.”
That mindset wasn’t just spoken. The following day, the Crusaders stepped back onto the course in Granbury and recorded yet another stellar round, shooting under par for the second day in a row. There was no potential pitfall into a state of complacency or overconfidence. The Cru followed up on its record-setting first round by securing a 42-stroke win in the second, leading the tournament in virtually every stat category, from par 3-scoring (-5) to par 5-scoring (-16) to birdies (44).
It may have been late September—still eight months away from May’s NCAA Championship Tournament in Florida—but Cox could tell he had a special team on his hands.
“After we finished that first round at Granbury, we were leaving the 18th green and going back to the clubhouse,” Cox remembered. “One of the freshmen said, ‘Coach, this has got to be a school record, right?’ I went, ‘Well, I don’t know about that. It’s probably close, but I don’t know if it’s a record or not.’ Because in 2016-17 and 2021-22, those good teams…I mean, really good teams. We were ranked way up in the Top 5 in 16-17.
“I said, ‘I don’t know, but I’ll check.’ Sure enough, by a stroke, it’s the school record. I went ‘Wow.’ But that’s how those guys are thinking.”
Through four tournaments this fall, Cox’s squad won three. At the Texas Tri-Tourney, contested less than a month into the fall semester, UMHB—unranked at the time—beat No. 11 Trinity (TX) and No. 18 Southwestern, with a 16-stroke win. Then came the UMHB Invitational and the program records. The Cru followed those two performances up by finishing No. 2 at the West Pines Invitational and winning the 24-team Golfweek Invitational in mid-October, two tremendous showings in strong, competitive fields that tend to give indicators as to who the national title contenders will be in the spring.
UMHB closed its fall slate ranked No. 3 nationally in the Clippd rankings behind fellow national contenders Huntingdon and Emory.
“There were such good teams there, and for us to be able to compete like that, I think it lets our guys know that we’re capable,” Cox said, noting the win at Golfweek along with the strong performance the week prior at West Pines. “We were actually standing in line to board the flight coming home from Florida [after the Golfweek Invitational] and a coach from the Pacific Northwest who I’m friends with texted me and said, ‘You guys have the lowest scoring average in the nation in Division III right now.’ I just shook my head. It’s staggering to think what they’ve been able to do and to do it against that kind of field.
“That’s what our guys are after. They want to play the best and see how we can do and stack up. It’s fun to see them hungry like that.”
That hunger, Cox says, is evident in the mentality of his players. They are well aware of the talent currently in the program, with five players currently ranked in the Top 50 nationally per Scoreboard by Clipped, and several more capable of contributing at tournaments when given the chance.
Naturally, that makes for some very competitive qualifying rounds in practice. For as much as Cox might like to put all of his 12 players on the course for a given tournament, he has just five spots in the lineup, meaning that inevitably, some very good players get left at home from time to time. It also means that there are instances where getting onto the lineup card is perhaps more difficult than the tournament, considering that the field for a random qualifying round includes several of the best players in the region.
That dynamic makes for some tough decisions for Cox, and some hard rounds for his players. But it is the kind of problem every program wishes it could have, because that is the sort of trait they know is found on national title-contending rosters.
“They realize that being on a deep team means some really good players are sitting at home sometimes,” Cox said. “And they all want that. They all want to be part of that kind of culture and that kind of team. That’s been huge for us.
“A few weeks ago, a player was in my office talking about some things, and he brought up the depth. He said, ‘Coach, this is what really good programs have to deal with, isn’t it cool?’. He’s one of those guys that is realizing being on a good team means that, and they all know that. I’m not so sure that in some respects, and I wouldn’t speak for the players, but I’m not so sure that in some respects it isn’t tougher for them to qualify than to go to the tournaments. Because they know that if they get in the lineup here right now, they’ve really done something.”
UMHB’s roster is incredibly young—nine of the 12 on the roster are either freshmen or sophomores—but they are also exceptionally talented across the board. It’s easy to see the positives of The Cru’s evident depth from the outside, but internally, it can prove to be challenging for the players, who are teammates and yet all battling for the few spots to represent the team in tournament settings. While some, like sophomore Evan Acevedo, experienced a similar dynamic in high school, many have not, and that makes their handling of the program’s current dynamic all the more impressive.
“Evan was saying, ‘I know exactly what this is like,’” Cox noted, referring to the depth on the roster. “There are a lot of guys who come to us from high school programs where they were “the guy” on their team. But Evan, for example, was at Trinity Christian Academy, where [current PGA pro] Will Zalatoris played in high school. Evan had to fight tooth and nail to get in the lineup at a place like that. So he knows what it feels like, because he’s been in one. But a lot of these guys don’t have that experience. So the fact that they’re helping each other with that is a big part of the way we’ve been able to handle it.”
Amongst the freshmen who garnered attention through the fall was Colton O’Dell. The Georgetown native wasted no time making his mark for the purple and gold, recording three Top 5 finishes during the fall, including an individual title at the West Pines Invitational. He heads into the spring championship season as the No. 9-ranked player in Division III, with an impressive stroke average of 70.90.
When discussing O’Dell’s strong first semester, Cox mentioned several attributes, including a noteworthy ability to navigate the mental side of the sport.
“He’s got a really good demeanor about him,” Cox said. “He seems to let things roll off his back pretty well. If he makes a mistake, he recovers and responds. He’s shown the ability to go deep as things go along and not be afraid of that. There’s a lot of guys where you’re breaking these thresholds for yourself in tournaments, and it’s hard to do the first time because you’ve never been there before. He just takes it in stride and keeps right on rocking.”
The presence of newcomers like O’Dell isn’t the only new addition for UMHB men’s golf this fall. On Oct. 17, the Jane and Mac Hickerson Crusader Golf Club officially opened on campus, giving both the UMHB men’s and women’s teams a state-of-the-art facility with a practice course that includes four greens and 22 tee boxes. It is a luxury and advantage that few of The Cru’s Division III counterparts have, including many top programs. Cox can already see the impact it has had on his team, even in the short time that it’s been accessible.
“It’s a blessing with a capital ‘B”,” Cox said of his response when asked “what’s it like?” having “The Mac” on campus. “That’s the only word I can think of to describe and encompass all of it. It’s the opportunity for them to be right here and have access to it between classes if they have time. We don’t necessarily have to drive somewhere to get in that kind of work. We have an administration that’s supporting it with its care, not just its construction. It’s phenomenal. The word is getting out, and there are a lot of really quality players reaching out, asking to come visit.
“You don’t want to sound arrogant at all, because we realize that we do have something that a lot of people don’t have. There’s a lot of Division I schools that don’t even have this. But I think it just goes back to that commitment to excellence that the university wants. Dr. O’Rear says it pretty consistently when he speaks: ‘We feel like if you’re going to keep score at something, then we ought to try to win.’ And I think that’s this. If we’re going to spend resources on things like top-notch facilities, travel, coaches, equipment, uniforms, and those things, then let’s be good at it.”
Cox’s squad certainly represents that mentality. The Cru is in the midst of a winter break from competition, but will return to action in the early spring aiming at defending their ASC title and booking a return trip to NCAAs. With the way they closed the fall, there is no shortage of optimism and excitement around the program. Considering that three of the last four winners of the Golfweek Invitational have gone on to post Top 5 finishes at NCAAs the following spring, the Crusaders know just how incredible this season can be.
“There’s one tournament that means you’re going to go to the national championship for sure, and that’s winning the conference championship,” Cox said. “These guys all know that. But they know they’ve made a really big statement by what they’ve done this fall. And it hasn’t been just four or five of them; a bunch have contributed to those scores. They’ve got this quiet confidence about them and how they’re going about things. They seem to really relish those opportunities to go play.
“At Golfweek, that course was not easy. It’s a typically Florida course; there’s a lot of water, a lot of sand. The northern schools were starting to play better as the rounds went on, and I had told my wife the night before in a phone call, ‘Tomorrow, I feel like of the top four teams playing in these last groups, if anybody shoots 3, maybe 4-under par as a team, they’ll win it.’ What do I know? It took near 11-under to win it. And our guys never seemed to bat an eye.
“They just started making birdies when they had to, and kept up, and did everything they needed to do to win. It’s been really fun to be around them. It really is a coach’s dream.”
