May 7, 2004

HOWEY-IN-THE-HILLS, Fla. - The No. 17 UNLV women's golf team shot 297 for the second consecutive round and retained its second-place position on the leaderboard after Friday's second round of play at the NCAA East Regional.

The Rebels lost some ground on first-place Duke, who leads by 16 strokes after carding 292 as a team on Friday. However, UNLV sits a comfortable 18 stokes in front of eighth-place Furman, which would be the last school to qualify for the NCAA Championship if the regional ended today.

As long as the Rebels can fire a respectable score in Saturday's final round of the NCAA East Regional, they will advance as a team to the NCAA Championship for the first time in school history.

Like her team, sophomore Sunny Oh lost a bit of ground to the overall leader. Oh, who began the day three strokes out of the lead, shot a one-over-par 73 and now sits five strokes behind North Carolina's Meaghan Francella.

Matching Oh's 73 as the Rebels' low score on the day was junior Hwanhee Lee. After rounds of 77 and 73, Lee sits 21st overall.

Seema Sadekar and Elena Kurokawa also figured into the team's scoring. Sadekar pitched in a 75 and Kurokawa added a 76 for the team 297. Only Young Pak's 79 was discarded from the team score.

Final round play at the par-72, 6,185-yard Mission Inn Golf and Tennis Resort will begin at 8:00 a.m. EDT. The Rebels will tee off at 8:10 a.m. with Duke and North Carolina.