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"I'm in between throwing up and going home, whatever that means," LeBaron said.
Well, the coach kept down his lunch,
and he went home happy.
Thacker rolled in a swinging 30-foot
birdie putt on the par-3 17th Sunday to finish off a two-shot victory, and the Sand Sharks fired a team score of 6-under-par 282, shattering the two-year-old program's best one-round total by nine shots and vaulting USCB to a seven-shot win over Berry College.
USCB's women narrowly missed making it a clean sweep for the host school, finishing one shot behind Berry's mark of 648 after beginning the day five shots back. Berry's Callie Bennett edged SCAD's Katina Ruest by one shot for the individual title. Cande Villar-Urquiza led the Sand Sharks with a final-round score of 77, putting her in fourth place overall.
"The girls came back and played really well," LeBaron said. "Cande had a great round, and (assistant coach) Chris (Cuneo) did a phenomenal job with them, getting them to come back from where they were and get their first hardware of the season."
Meanwhile, the USCB men continued to add to their growing trophy collection, winning their second tournament in 13 days and doing so against some top-flight competition. Runner-up Berry was ranked sixth in the most recent NAIA Coaches Poll released by Golfworld, and both Berry and third-place Savannah College of Art and Design are in the top 10 of Golfstat.com's NAIA head-to-head standings, along with the Sand Sharks.
The Sand Sharks started the day a shot behind Berry -- the same way they began the final round two weeks ago at the Wilmington Island Club Intercollegiate -- and they appeared comfortable playing from behind. Three players -- Thacker, Jon Pannone and Jack Bingham -- shot 70 or better, and Reed Howard added a 74 to round out USCB's sterling team score.
"This morning, I talked to the guys, and basically I told them we've been here before, so you just go out there and take care of your business," Pannone said. "We know how to win, because we've been there before."
Having been there before helped Thacker hold off a strong field for his second victory in two weeks, as well. The sophomore from Derbyshire, England, began the day a shot behind Berry's Samuel del Val, but it didn't take him long to make up the ground. Thacker buried a long putt from the fringe for an eagle at the par-5 seventh hole to get to 2 under for the day and 3 under for the tournament, and he played it smart from there.
Banking on the experience from the Wilmington Island Club Intercollegiate, where he squandered most of a five-shot lead before holding off SCAD's Tom Hayes, Thacker played conservatively on the back nine, protecting his slim lead.
"Because it was really close between us, it almost makes you concentrate even better," Thacker said. "I couldn't do anything wrong really, or else I wouldn't have won."
He made seven consecutive pars until the 17th, where his tee shot bounded over the green and came to rest on the fringe, leaving a long, bending birdie putt, which he dropped for a two-shot lead.
"You could see the grain was going right to left and it was quite downhill," Thacker said. "It was one of those putts that if you could just getting it rolling at the right speed, it had a pretty good chance of going in, because the line was quite clear."
That put the pressure on del Val, who yanked his approach at the last hole into the water and settled for bogey, dropping him into a second-place tie with SCAD's Loren Bunting.
The tournament wraps up the fall season for the Sand Sharks, who feel they established themselves this fall as one of the top teams in the Sun Conference, if not the nation.
"Up until now, we had talked about how good we were, and we had thought about how good we were," Pannone said. "To come through with our second win, we validated where we are and where we rank among SCAD and Berry and Oklahoma City and Oklahoma Christian, which are all unbelievable teams. Now we can finally say we're with them."
