Shark Bites: USCB golfers gaining recognition

It occurs to me that readers who are following the USC Beaufort golf team might be a bit confused about the rankings we've been referencing in stories about the Sand Sharks (and it occurs to me, because I myself was rather confused by the rankings at first) so I thought an explanation might be in order.
 
 And we have all this room in cyberspace, so what the heck.
 
 First of all, it took me the better part of the fall season to find any rankings whatsoever. The NAIA's Web site says new rankings will be released Dec. 1, but that's obviously a ways away. I finally stumbled onto the Nike/Golfworld NAIA Coaches Poll, which was last released on Oct. 15, and I've been religiously checking for an updated poll from Golfworld since the Sand Sharks won the Wilmington Island Club Intercollegiate two weeks ago, beating four of the top 25 teams in the most recent poll along the way.
 
 The Sand Sharks haven't received any votes in the coaches poll thus far (probably because most of the coaches don't know the second-year program exists) but I expect they'll start getting more attention after this impressive fall season.
 
 So just how impressive was USCB's fall campaign? Well, I'm happy I you asked disembodied blog voice, because it brings us to another note about rankings. Golfstat.com, which is sort of the clearinghouse for all things related to college golf, publishes "head-to-head standings" for collegiate golf, which provide a way of quantifying tournament finishes.
 
 Essentially, every time a team plays in a tournament, they get a "win" for every team they finish ahead of and a "loss" for every team they finish behind (this only applies to teams from the save classification; in USCB's case, other NAIA schools). When Golfstat released its last round of standings, the Sand Sharks ranked fourth with a record of 154-5.
 
 Needless to say, the Sand Sharks won't remain the best-kept secret in NAIA golf for long if they keep this up. But we'll have to wait until the spring season to find out just how well they stack up against the rest of the NAIA.