FAYETTEVILLE — The No. 11 Arkansas men’s golf team followed in the footsteps of their counterparts on the women’s side by drawing a national No. 2 seed and heading West for the first stage of the NCAA postseason.

Coach Brad McMakin’s Razorbacks were chosen Wednesday as the No. 2 seed for the NCAA Austin (Texas) Regional to be hosted by the University of Texas on May 13-15.

The Razorbacks were seeded behind SEC rival Tennessee, which earned its first-ever No. 1 seed, and ahead of the host Longhorns. Arkansas State, winners of the Sun Belt Conference championship are the 12th seed at the regional.

The 13-team regional will compete at the University of Texas Golf Club for 54 holes with the top five teams advancing to the NCAA Championships, which will take place May 24-29 at the Omni La Costa Resort & Spa in Carlsbad, Calif.

“We’re obviously excited about getting to go to the UT club in Austin,” McMakin said. “The team has played really well this year. It’s a great golf course and it definitely fits into our game plan of being difficult.”

The other NCAA regional tournaments are in Baton Rouge, Chapel Hill N.C., Rancho Sante Fe, Calif., Palo Alto, Calif., and West Lafayette, Ind. The top five finishers at each of the regionals will qualify for the NCAA Championships.

The rest of the field in Austin will consist of Georgia, Wake Forest, Notre Dame, North Carolina-Greensboro, BYU, Utah, San Jose State, Grand Canyon and Missouri-Kansas City.

“We’ve got some great teams out there,” McMakin said. “We’ll have to do a good job and do what we’ve been doing all year and I think we’ll be fine.”

The Razorbacks are coming off a trip to the SEC match play semifinals, where they lost to No. 1 ranked and eventual champion Auburn.

No. 7 Tennessee placed third after three rounds of stroke play at the SEC Championships before the Volunteers were ousted by No. 22 Texas A&M in the match play quarterfinals.

Arkansas State finished three rounds of stroke play at the Sun Belt Championships in first place at Annandale Golf Club in Madison, Miss., with Thomas Schmidt finishing as runner-up. The Red Wolves went on to defeat Texas State 3-1 in the semifinal and won their first Sun Belt match play title with a 3-2 victory over Louisiana-Monroe.

AUSTIN, Texas – Carlos Sanchez, the 43-year-old photographer for an Austin TV news station, is facing two new charges one week after he was arrested while covering a protest on the UT Austin campus, the Texas Department of Public Safety said Wednesday.

Troopers said Sanchez, who works for Fox 7 Austin, met with DPS Special Agents on Wednesday morning. During the meeting, Sanchez was charged with two misdemeanors — assault and interference with public duties.

Sanchez was arrested again and booked into the Travis County Jail.

DPS said one of its troopers was struck in the “lower head and neck area” due to Sanchez’s camera.

“The department understands a journalist’s right to cover events of the day, and we work to ensure those rights are protected while also upholding the laws of this state,” DPS said in a statement Wednesday. “While journalists should be provided access, it is never acceptable to interfere with official police duties and assaulting an officer of the law – no matter the degree – will never be tolerated. DPS will always work to ensure the safety of our officers. Both law enforcement officers and journalists should be expected to do their jobs in a professional manner – and we strongly believe a line was crossed last week when one of our Troopers was assaulted while trying to do his job.

Sanchez was arrested during the April 24 protest when he was also booked into the Travis County Jail. He was initially charged with criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor, as well as assault against a peace officer, which is considered a second-degree felony.

When KSAT reached out to DPS for comment on April 24, the agency responded April 25, vowing DPS’ Criminal Investigations Division would “further” investigate Sanchez’s case.

Sanchez’s criminal trespassing charge was dismissed one day after his first arrest. Fox 7 Austin reported April 30 that Sanchez’s second-degree felony charge was also dropped.

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Austin, TX – On Monday, April 28, around 1 p.m., University of Texas at Austin students and community members gathered on the UT South Lawn to set up a Popular University encampment. A group of around 40 people was quickly joined by hundreds more supporting students, as booming chants of, “Free free Palestine,” echoed throughout UT’s South Mall.

Shortly after the encampment went up, UT police, Austin police and Texas State Troopers wearing riot gear arrived, assaulted and arrested at least 80 protesters. During the attack on the encampment, police used pepper spray and flash bangs on students, threw a disabled person out of a wheelchair, and dragged students on the ground by their legs.

Despite the police violence, students bravely fought back, and the crowd surrounded the police in an effort to stop them from making more arrests. After hours of heated struggle, the massive crowd eventually marched down 22nd Street, pushing the police to retreat off the street.

Hundreds more Austinites arrived to campus to support the now torn-down student encampment, many holding umbrellas to block pepper spray and bringing supplies like food, water and first aid equipment. 

As soon as protesters were hauled to Travis County Jail, over 50 people arrived with drums and megaphones out front to demand the release of all those arrested. Police purposely delayed booking and processing the arrestees, and they are still holding at least 40 of the protesters in jail as of 5:30 a.m. this morning, May 1. Students and community have continued to rally outside the jail for over 36 hours and counting in spite of this repression.

Jules Lattimore, a Students for a Democratic Society member who was at the jail support rally said, “We will not stop fighting, no matter what UT administration or Texas does. We demand divestment, we demand the coward President Jay Hartzell resigns, we demand everyone jailed is immediately freed, and we demand Greg Abbott’s police thugs off our campus. When we fight, we win!”

#AustinTX #StudentMovement #SDS #AntiWarMovement #International #MiddleEast #Palestine #Occupy4Gaza