10-05-2025
A hurricane set in motion an improbable season (and next) for this Big 10 men's golf team
A hurricane set in motion an improbable season (and next) for this Big 10 men's golf team
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Hurricane Milton didn't do the people of Florida any favors last October. Michigan State's men's golf program, on the other hand …
If the Spartans are the team they think they might be next year — perhaps the deepest team they've had — they'll have to thank Milton's ferocity for canceling the Quail Valley Collegiate Invitational in Vero Beach, Florida, last October. Because if senior star Ashton McCulloch had played in one more event before he separated his shoulder, he wouldn't have any eligibility remaining and wouldn't be coming back next fall to headline what could be a special team.
'Next year's roster will be the deepest (we've had) by a lot,' MSU men's golf coach Casey Lubahn said.
It'll be that deep because of what this year's team has become without McCulloch — a team that, well beyond its winter expectations, finished third in the 18-team Big Ten championships and then was selected for the NCAA regionals, a team now led in no small way by two Lansing-area stars, Williamston's Caleb Bond and East Lansing's Drew Miller.
The Spartans are the 10 seed in the 14-team Tallahassee (Florida) Regional, playing May 12-14. The top five teams advance to the NCAA championships.
'If we play just like we did at Big Tens, we'll advance,' Lubahn said. 'And we didn't play great at Big Tens. It's getting them to think that their good is good enough.'
That's been a big part of the story of this season — adjusting and then re-adjusting expectations as the Spartans learned their good was absolutely good enough.
This, Lubahn thought, would be a rebuilding season after McCulloch's injury — which he suffered while celebrating as he tested equipment for a golf manufacturer that's one of his endorsements. McCulloch (best known for winning the Canadian Amateur in 2023) had carried the team during the fall season and, even with him, they weren't playing that well.
'Even though we've made it to the last nine NCAAs and we've been finishing top four in the league, I think we all just took our expectations (down a bit and said), 'Let's just worry about getting better, growing, learning,'' Lubahn said. 'And we did that for about two weeks in January. Then we went out the first week of February and I'm like 'Dang, these guys look good.' They just kept getting better the rest of the year. So it went from a rebuilding year to a reloading year pretty quick.'
Losing McCulloch meant losing about four or five shots a round. What allowed MSU to make up for it was that each of the five guys in the lineup took about a stroke a day off their scores.
'I've never seen that, ever,' Lubahn said. 'I've never seen four guys go from basically out of the lineup or not capable of playing at Division I or Big Ten golf in one semester, to all performing very well in the next semester.'
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Bond and Miller were a big part of that. Bond's rise is pretty incredible — from someone who Lubahn believed was just a little below the Big Ten level when he was coming out of Williamston High School, to someone he thought would be a solid contributor this season as a transfer from Ferris State, to the guy who's carried the most weight on MSU's team, as the Spartans' low scorer this season with an average around of 71.53.
'From my senior year of high school to my sophomore year at Ferris I really became a way better putter and a better driver of the golf ball, too,' Bond said.
'I didn't know he was going to be this kind of impact player,' Lubahn said. 'We talked about him all summer being a very steady contributor. By Big Ten championship Sunday, he had the team on his back, which is just amazing to watch a kid go through that. And it was emotional for me.'
Lubahn could relate from his own playing days at MSU in the early 2000s — when he wasn't in the playing group as a sophomore and was the top player on the team by his junior season.
'He leveled up very quickly because he believed his good was good enough,' Lubahn said of Bond.
And, he's a 'goldfish,' to steal a reference from the show 'Ted Lasso'.
'(Bond) is a genius at moving on three seconds after a shot,' Lubahn continued. 'For a lead player, he hits two or three shots a round — and he'll laugh about them — they're pretty poor. And if it was somebody else, you'd think, 'Oh, boy, there goes his confidence for the next hour.' He's a goldfish. He moves on.'
Miller has always believed his good is good enough.
'The thing I love about Drew is he's not afraid of anything,' Lubahn said of the freshman. 'The thing I worry about with Drew sometimes, he's not afraid of anything.'
Miller was a big-time recruit out of East Lansing, but not playing all that well when he arrived, and those struggles continued into the fall. McCulloch's injury gave Miller an opening in the lineup in January.
'He ran with it,' Lubahn said.
'I think there's a lot to learn, and I think that's at every level, too,' Miller said. 'Everyone kind of goes through it at some point, and even more than once. … I think you're always going to come out of that (struggle) a better player than you went in it. And I think just having a good environment of coaches and teammates to help you keep working at it and know you're going to figure it out is important.'
As Miller, Bond, sophomore Lorenzo Pinili, freshman Julian Menser and sophomore Lucas Acevedo prepare to tackle an NCAA regional, they're excited for this opportunity but also hopeful that this is just the beginning.
'I think this season is really important to us,' Miller said. 'I think we have a really good chance at making the national championship this year, but it's hard to not think about next year in the sense that we look good. But, I mean, you look at it in these other sports, too, and it's not like it always works that linear.'
'The way we finished at Big Tens, especially having the second round, second lowest round of the day, I think that's a huge step toward playing well at regionals,' Bond said, 'knowing we've showed up when we needed to. Even though our season will be on the line, we have nothing to lose at regionals.'
'Four of the five guys had never played a Big Ten championship,' Lubahn said. 'They handled that incredibly well. They followed the game plan exactly like we asked them to. If they do that this week, whether win or lose, they're going to understand when we get to next year where we need be.'
If it seems like a lot of talk about next year with a lot still to play for this year, it's because most teams in NCAA regionals won't return everyone AND add a player like McCulloch.
'If he would have played that (last) event (in the fall), no hurricane, he's not going to be back,' Lubahn said. 'I don't think he really ever had a plan to come back. But when you consider how it all fell, maybe it was something just miraculous. And the reality is, with the PGA Tour setup now, it's almost as easy to make the PGA Tour coming from college golf as it is as a touring program. We are going to facilitate everything we can to help him come back and go right from here to the PGA Tour next year.'
After building on whatever Bond, Miller and Co. are able to do this month.
'At some point during the spring, everybody kind of found something that gave them confidence,' Bond said.
Contact Graham Couch at gcouch@ Follow him on X @Graham_Couch and BlueSky @GrahamCouch.
