It was hard to identify the Missouri women’s golf team’s No. 1 player last season.

Potter

One week Madde Augustsson carried that flag. Another it was Ellen Hoeper. Then freshman Julia Potter laid claim to the top spot at the NCAA Central Regional, and she hasn’t let it go since.

Potter, one of four unanimous selections to the All-Big 12 squad, has paced the Tigers this season, winning a pair of individual titles and finishing in a tie for sixth in the Big 12 Championships in Stillwater, Okla. The left-handed sophomore now is hoping to lead her team to a surprise showing in the NCAA East Regional, which starts tomorrow at the University of Georgia Golf Course in Athens, Ga.

Missouri will tee off tomorrow afternoon as the 16th seed in a 21-team field that includes eight squads, led by No. 1 Duke, ranked in the latest National Golf Coaches Association poll. Eight teams and two individuals will advance to the NCAA Championships May 20-23 in Albuquerque, N.M.

"We’re not going in saying, ‘Oh, we’re the 16th seed. People aren’t going to expect a lot of us, so we’re not going to expect a lot of us,’ " Potter said. "We’re going in going, ‘Hey, we know we can get to nationals. We know we can compete. Let’s just do it.’ "

The Tigers had some confidence to pack with them when they headed to Georgia yesterday morning after a surprising fourth-place finish in the Big 12 Championships. Without that breakthrough performance, Missouri might not have been packing for the regional tournament at all.

"We were kind of sweating it the last couple of weeks just to get in," said Coach Stephanie Priesmeyer, whose team earned a place in the postseason for the sixth straight year and the 10th time in the past 11 seasons. "It really came down to how we performed at Big 12s."

Potter led the way with rounds of 78 and 77 on the first day of competition and followed it up with an 80 to finish in a three-way tie for sixth, 10 shots behind medalist Jaclyn Sweeney, a freshman at Oklahoma State. It was Potter’s fifth top-10 finish of the year.

"We haven’t had a lot of individual champions, but she goes into tournaments now thinking she’s going to win, especially after her two wins," Priesmeyer said of Potter.

The Granger, Ind., product is the first Missouri woman to win more than two tournaments since Amelia Moses in the 2000-01 season.

What sets her apart is her competitiveness. While so many golfers would rather not cloud their heads by keeping track of their score or standing in a tournament, Potter always wants to know and is constantly pestering Priesmeyer to keep her informed. During the Johnie Imes Invitational in October, she learned from Priesmeyer that she trailed by three shots as she made the turn at The Club at Old Hawthorne. She then went out and birdied five holes on the back nine to win with a course-record 66.

"I just want to know what I have to do to be where I want to be," Potter said. "To me, it’s a distraction if I don’t know where I am because I’m always wondering. … I don’t want to come across as I’m all about the competition, but I do love it. I just love competing in golf, and I think one of the things when you’re competing, you have to know where you’re at. You have to know if you’re two strokes up, if you’re two strokes behind. If you want to win, I think you have to know what you have to do to get there."

That mind-set has helped establish Potter as a player the Tigers can lean on. They’ve counted her score in every round of every tournament this season.

But Missouri’s hopes of advancing beyond regional competition depend just as much on the results it gets from the rest of the lineup.

Three of MU’s five golfers - Potter, Augustsson and junior Chelsea Schriewer - have already been through the grind of regional competition. Sophomore Michelle Morgan and redshirt freshman Lindsey Haupt will be teeing off in a regional for the first time.

Morgan, another Indiana product, is coming off a tie for 15th in the Big 12 Championships. It was her best showing of the spring. She could be ready to give a boost to the top of the lineup, which has been without Hoepper since last May when she underwent shoulder surgery.

Haupt, who redshirted last season after injuring her shoulder in the fall of 2006, might have solidified the bottom part of the rotation. She won an intrasquad battle for the final spot in the lineup by 21 shots then tied for 29th in the 60-player field at the Big 12 Championships.

The Tigers are going to need all five of their players to contribute to have a chance at reaching the NCAA Championships for the first time since 2005. But even a season-best performance might not be enough to emerge from such a loaded field.

"Our stroke average isn’t super low," Priesmeyer said. "To get into the top seven or eight, we’re going to have to have some help to make it happen. But it happens every year."

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