Huskers Aim for NCAA Regional Play in 2026 – University of Nebraska

The Nebraska men’s golf team enters the 2025-26 season focused on continuing the improvement the Huskers have made in Judd Cornell’s first three seasons as head coach.

Last season, the Big Red finished among the top three in six tournaments during the season, including a runner-up finish at Ohio State’s Robert Kepler Invitational to end the regular season.

The Huskers, who finished 32 spots higher than the previous season in the final Scoreboard national rankings, achieved their highest ranking as a team in more than a decade to stay in the hunt for an NCAA Regional bid until late in the season.

Cornell will be challenged to replace two of Nebraska’s top five golfers from a year ago in senior Hamish Murray and graduate student Reed Malleck, but the 2025-26 Huskers also have a solid nucleus to build around.

Rudy Sautron headlines a strong group of golfers returning to the Husker lineup. The junior from Reunion Island, France, led Nebraska with a school-record 71.70 stroke average over 30 rounds in his first season with the Big Red in 2024-25.

Sautron, who also set the school single-round record with a 63 (-9) at the Steelwood Collegiate to close the fall portion of Nebraska’s schedule in late October, showed the ability to play electric golf early in the season.

He won the Gopher Invitational to open the season, before adding a tie for third at the Qubein Cup and a tie for sixth at Steelwood. He closed his sophomore season with six individual top-15 finishes for the Huskers.

Sautron entered the spring season ranked among the top-80 golfers in NCAA Division I, before closing the year in the top 250. With a year of Division I experience under his belt, Sautron is hoping to lock up an NCAA Regional appearance for himself, while leading the Big Red to a team bid to regionals in 2025-26.

Sautron can expect plenty of help from Brodie Cunningham. The sophomore from Glasgow, Scotland, showed impressive improvements throughout his true freshman season and was one of Nebraska’s top golfers during the spring.

Cunningham, who finished among the top 500 in the final national rankings, closed the year with a Nebraska freshman record 72.61 stroke average, including a 72.35 over 17 spring rounds. During the spring season, Cunningham produced four consecutive top-15 individual finishes, including a tie for third with a career-best 209 (-7) at the Bell Bank “Pay It Forward” Intercollegiate in Arizona in late March. He followed with a second straight top-10 finish…