It's Alabama-Auburn in men's final and USC-Stanford in women's final in East Lake Cup

   Alabama and Auburn didn’t seem to care that their opponents in the East Lake Cup semifinals Tuesday at the East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta were more highly-rated than they were.

   Maybe the Southeastern Conference’s decision to go to a match-play format, mimicking the NCAA Championship format, to determine its champion has made its teams more adept at match play.

   Or maybe, being Alabama and Auburn, they really wanted to go at it again, head-to-head in match play, like they did last spring in the SEC final at Sea Island Golf Club’s Seaside Course in St. Simons Island, Ga. when Tigers freshman Wills Padgett dropped a 20-foot birdie putt on the 18^th hole to defeat Crimson Tide senior Jonathan Hardee and give Auburn a 3-2 victory and the conference title.

   Both teams went on deep runs in the postseason, reaching the semifinals of the NCAA Championship, which is why they were invited to the East Lake Cup in the first place.

   Tuesday, No. 14 Alabama avenged its 5-0 loss to Oklahoma State in the Final Match at the Cowboys’ home course at Karsten Creek Golf Club with a 3-2 victory over the No. 1 team in the country in the latest Golfstat rankings.

   But you know there is something even bigger gnawing at the psyche in Roll Tide Country, you know kind of like when that Auburn guy returned the missed field goal for a touchdown to beat Alabama in the Iron Bowl. This is only golf, of course, but it is Alabama-Auburn and the video of the celebration that ensued when Padgett’s putt dropped last spring wasn’t real hard to find on the Internet.

   Anyway, the No. 4 Tigers did their part by knocking off No. 3 Duke, which had earned the top seed in the match-play qualifying round Monday, 4-1, on the challenging 7,430-yard, par-72 East Lake layout.

   That probably did have a little something to do with the Tigers’ new-found enthusiasm for match play. Oh yeah, and one of the Auburn guys, Jovan Rebula, a junior from South Africa and the nephew of another pretty good golfer from South Africa, that Ernie Els guy, yeah, he won The Amateur Championship at Royal Aberdeen Golf Club in Scotland last summer. You have to be pretty good at match play to win that thing.

   The Dookies did get a point from Adrien Pendaries, a sophomore from France who dismantled Auburn’s Trace Crowe, a senior from Bluffton, S.C., 7 and 6.

   But after that it was all Auburn – the Tigers, the War Eagles, the Plainsmen, Keith Jackson used to spit out all of its nicknames in one breath.

   The big wins came from the sophomores, Padgett of Wichita, Kan. and Brandon Mancheno of Jacksonville, Fla. who was unconscious during Auburn’s run to the NCAA semifinals. Padgett edged Alex Smalley, a senior from Wake Forest, N.C., 1-up, and Mancheno beat Chandler Eaton, a junior from Alpharetta, Ga., 1-up.

   Rebula claimed a 4 and 3 win over Evan Katz, a sophomore from Washington, D.C. and Jacob Solomon, a senior from Dublin, Calif., cruised to 6 and 5 decision over Shwish Dwivedi, a senior from Redwood City, Calif.

   Alabama couldn’t handle Oklahoma State’s two top guns, reigning U.S. Amateur champion Viktor Hovland, a junior from Norway and the No. 4 player in the World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR), and Matthew Wolff, a sophomore from Agoura Hills, Calif. and No. 5 in the WAGR.

   Hovland, the individual medalist in Monday’s qualifying round, claimed a 2 and 1 win over Frankie Capan III, a freshman from North Oaks, Minn., and Wolff earned a 4 and 3 victory over Davis Shore, a sophomore from Knoxville, Tenn.

   After that, though, it was Roll Tide.

   Prescott Butler, a freshman from Old Westbury, N.Y., downed Hayden Wood, a senior from Edmond, Okla., 3 and 2, William Furr, a sophomore from Jackson, Miss., pulled out a 2-up decision over Austin Eckroat, a sophomore from Edmond, Okla., and Davis Riley, a senior from Hattiesburg, Miss. and the No. 10 player in the WAGR, claimed a 4 and 3 win over Zach Bauchou, a senior from Forest, Va.

   So, Alabama-Auburn for the East Lake Cup on Halloween. Should be scary good.

   On the women’s side, it will be another conference rivalry and a rematch of last year’s East Lake Cup final when Southern California and Stanford, out of the Pac-12, get it on.

   The Trojans, No. 1 in the latest Golfstat rankings, beat Stanford, 3-2, in the East Lake Cup final. But hardly anybody was left from that Southern Cal team when golf resumed following the midseason break.

   No problem. A Fab Four of freshmen didn’t skip a beat as the Trojans made it all the way to the semifinals before falling to a powerful Alabama team. They arrived at East Lake with four sophomores and a freshman in the lineup and that No. 1 ranking.

   They are two consistently excellent programs, although neither has a national championship to show for it since the Cardinal won it all in 2015, the first year of match play in NCAA Championship.

   Southern Cal knocked off reigning national champion Arizona, ranked 15^th and the third Pac-12 team in  last spring’s NCAA semifinals, 4-1, over an East Lake layout that measured 6,127 yards for the ladies.

   A key win for the Trojans came from Jennifer Chang, a sophomore from Cary, N.C. who edged Bianca Pagdanganan, a senior from the Philippines who was the hero of the Wildcats’ run to the national championship last spring, 1-up.

   There were so many talented freshmen all over the country last season and Jennifer Chang was right up there with the best of them.

   Alyaa Abdulghany, a sophomore from Newport Beach, Calif., edged Arizona’s Ya-Chun Chang, a freshman from Taiwan, 2-up.

   Southern Cal’s Down Under Duo of Amelia Garvey, a sophomore from New Zealand, and Gabriela Ruffels, a sophomore from Australia, picked up the last two points for the Trojans. Garvey claimed a 4 and 2 decision over Sandra Nordaas, a junior from Norway, while Ruffels earned a 3 and 2 win over Haley Moore, a senior from Escondido, Calif. and one of the more underrated players in women’s college golf.

   Arizona’s lone point came from Yu-Sang Hou, a sophomore from Taiwan who beat Malia Nam, a freshman from Kailua, Hawaii, 3 and 2.

   No. 11 Stanford, which claimed the top seed in qualifying for match play Monday, had little problem in handing a depleted No. 7 Alabama team a 4-1 setback.

   Still, there was an interesting matchup between Stanford’s Mika Liu, a sophomore from Beverly Hills, Calif., and Alabama’s Jiwon Jeon, a junior from South Korea who is No. 8 in the Women’s World Amateur Golf Ranking (WAGR) and the runnerup to Alabama teammate Kristen Gillman in the U.S. Women’s Amateur at the Golf Club of Tennessee last summer.

   Liu was a member of a young U.S. Curtis Cup team in 2016 that lost to Great Britain & Ireland at Dun Laoghaire Golf Club in suburban Dublin when she still had a year of high school left. She can play and she showed a little of that talent in a 1-up win over Jeon, a transfer from Daytona State, a junior college power.

   The Crimson Tide might very well be losing two of the best amateur players in the world in Gillman, No. 3 in the Women’s WAGR, and Lauren Stephenson, No. 4 in the Women’s WAGR, as they are in the midst of the LPGA Q-Series, eight rounds of golf at the Pinehurst Resort that could result in them earning LPGA Tour cards for 2019.

   Stanford’s studs, Albane Valenzuela, a junior from Switzerland and No. 5 in the Women’s WAGR, and Andrea Lee, a junior from Hermosa Beach, Calif. and No. 7 in the Women’s WAGR, are still very much in the Cardinal lineup.

   Lee was a teammate of Liu’s in 2016 at Dun Laoghaire and was a U.S. Curtis Cup team member again this year, along with Gillman and Stephenson, when the Stars & Stripes laid a 17-3 beatdown on GB&I at Quaker Ridge Golf Club in Scarsdale, N.Y. Lee rolled to a 7 and 5 decision over Mary Mac Trammell, a freshman from Mountain Brook, Ala.

   Valenzuela, the runnerup in the 2017 U.S. Women’s Amateur, claimed a 4 and 3 victory over Angelica Moresco, a sophomore from Italy and the only player in the Crimson Tide lineup this week who played in the NCAA Championship’s Final Match last spring.

   Ziyi Wang, a junior from China, earned the Cardinal’s other point with an 8 and 6 victory over Carolina Caminoli, a freshman from Italy.

   Alabama’s lone point came from Kenzie Wright, a junior from Frisco, Texas who transferred to Tuscaloosa from SMU. Wright edged Aline Krauter, a freshman from Germany, in 19 holes.