CHAMPIONSHIP CENTRAL
| Results

OXFORD, Miss. — The fifth-ranked Kentucky rifle defeated top-ranked West Virginia in the smallbore portion of the Great American Rifle Conference Championships inside Ole Miss’ Patricia C. Lamar National Guard Center on Saturday.

Kentucky and West Virginia tied with smallbore team scores of 2323, but Kentucky won the tiebreaker because of its 120 center shots compared with 115 by West Virginia.

Connor Davis won the smallbore individual conference title with a score of 588, three points off his school record, which came two weeks ago. Davis scored the 588 to advance to the final where he won. The individual final scores will not be available until tomorrow’s completion of the Championships.

“Overall we had a consistent team day in smallbore,” UK Head coach Harry Mullins said. “With two 579s and one 577 (Jason Sharbel and Jonathan Pinkel scored 579 each and Sonya May scored 577). Connor’s 588 really helped the team score to get us into a tie breaker with West Virginia. The tie breaker was center shots . We had 120 and they had 115.”

“I feel that if we keep on track with what we have been doing we will break through that wall and get our smallbore numbers a little higher,” Mullins said of his team’s Saturday performance. I was very proud of the entire team’s effort today. The no-squadded people shot air rifle today and performed well.

As an example of Mullins’ point about UK’s non-squad competitors performing well, Billy Azzinaro shot a PR air rifle score of 589.

Kentucky’s 2323 smallbore score was its third highest smallbore total of the season.

“Staying focused on the plan and keeping true to what we came here to do will have to be the focus tomorrow,” Mullins said.

On Sunday the team air rifle will commence at 9 a.m. ET with the team finals at 1:15 p.m.

The GARC Championships follow a postseason format where the counting team is split up throughout the course of the day with shooters on each relay.

Sunday, the final day of the Championships, could get exciting as scores begin to develop and pressure builds on the shooters competing while knowing what they need to score to not just beat their goals, but their competitors.
UK is one of nine teams competing at the three-day GARC Championships. The nine teams competing in the GARC Championships are Ole Miss, Army, Kentucky, Memphis, Navy, North Carolina State, Nebraska, West Virginia and Akron.

In 2014, Kentucky finished second in the GARC Championships. West Virginia won the title, and Nebraska placed third.

All nine teams in the conference are ranked inside the top 20.

Live scoring is available at http://garcrifle.com/targets/olemiss.html

Schedule of Events

Sunday, March 1
Team Air Rifle 1 9 AM
Team Air Rifle 2 11:15 AM
Team Air Rifle Finals 1:15 PM