Beacon Journal staff report

One day after finishing a stroke shy of winning the Mid-American Conference title — and grabbing the automatic national bid that goes with it — the Kent State University men's golf team learned Monday it has received an at-large spot in the 81-team field.

The Golden Flashes will compete with 27 teams in the NCAA Division I Central Regional. The event will be May 15-17 on the Scarlet Course at Ohio State University.

KSU is listed as the 12th seed. MAC champion Eastern Michigan also was assigned to the Central Regional, as the 24th seed.

Other regionals will be held in Tennessee and Washington. Each regional will send 10 teams and two individuals not on advancing teams to the championship finals.

The national championship tournament will be May 28-31 on the Kampen Course at the Birck Boilermaker Golf Complex in West Lafayette, Ind., with Purdue University as the host.

Stanford University is the defending Division I national champion. The Cardinal are seeded fourth in the West.

The top seeds are Georgia (East), Alabama (Central) and Southern California (West).

UA senior named
ballplayer of week

University of Akron senior Kurt Davidson (North Canton Hoover) on Monday was named Mid-American Conference East Division Player of the Week in baseball.

He led the Zips (22-19, 7-8 MAC) to their first league series victory on the road since 2005 as UA took 2-of-3 at Miami last weekend. Including a non-league game against Cleveland State, Davidson hit .529 (9-for-17) with 10 RBI, five doubles and a pair of home runs.

Zips add 3 women
to basketball team

The University of Akron women's basketball team on Monday announced the addition of three players for next season: junior college players Ayla Gazzardo and Jolene Tamboue, and high schooler Natasha Williams.

The signings bring the number of new players at UA next fall to seven. Kyle Baumgartner (North Canton Hoover), Denver McLean-Johnson (Brampton, Ontario/Mayfield Secondary), Jasmine Mushington (Baltimore, Md./Archbishop Carroll) and Tiesha Stubbs (Farrell, Pa./Farrell) signed letters of intent last November.

Gazzardo (Hammond, La.), a 5-3 point guard, led the nation's seventh-ranked junior college team last winter while averaging 9.3 points and 5.9 assists per game at Shelton State Community College in Tuscaloosa, Ala.

Tamboue (Manhattan, Kan.), a 5-11 forward, averaged 10.7 points and 9.8 rebounds (ranked 31st in the country) per game as a first-team all-conference and all-region performer at Independence Community College, which finished 24-9 overall and 15-3 in league play.

Williams (Canonsburg, Pa.), a 5-4 guard, was a first-team all-sectional standout last season. She led Canon-McMillan High in assists, finishing with 404 for her career, and was a sprinter on the track team.