Vanderbilt, Texas Tech and North Carolina have all made strong cases this season to be considered the team to beat in Division I men's golf.

All three are twice represented on the first spring watch list for the Fred Haskins Award presented by Stifel.

The top-ranked Commodores have sophomore Gordon Sargent and senior Matthew Riedel on the 15-player list. Sargent, the reigning NCAA individual champion, currently is the clear frontrunner for the award as he boasts two wins and nothing worse than T-7 in seven starts. Should Sargent win the award this May, he'd earn three PGA Tour University Accelerated points; he has 12 of the 20 points required to earn a PGA Tour card for this summer (Sargent has already said he'd defer that status to the following summer so that he'd be able to return to school for his junior year).

The Red Raiders, ranked second in Golfstat, have senior Ludvig Aberg and sophomore Calum Scott while the fifth-ranked Tar Heels boast sophomore David Ford and senior Austin Greaser.

Two mid-major players, North Florida's Nick Gabrelcik and Long Beach State's Ian Gilligan, a cancer survivor, are also on the list.

The Haskins Award is awarded annually to the most outstanding men’s college golfer, as voted on by players, coaches and media members. Past winners of the Haskins Award include Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ben Crenshaw and last season's winner, Chris Gotterup.

Here are the 15 players who made the first Haskins Award watch list of the spring, listed in alphabetical order:

• Ludvig Aberg, Sr., Texas Tech
• Cole Anderson, Jr., Florida State
• David Ford, So., North Carolina
• Nick Gabrelcik, Jr., North Florida
• Ian Gilligan, So., Long Beach State
• Austin Greaser, Sr., North Carolina
• Ben James, Fr., Virginia
• Tommy Kuhl, Sr., Illinois
• Christo Lamprecht, Jr., Georgia Tech
• Yuxin Lin, Sr., Florida
• Christiaan Maas, Fr., Texas
• Matthew Riedel, Sr., Vanderbilt
• Gordon Sargent, So., Vanderbilt
• Calum Scott, So., Texas Tech
• Michael Thorbjornsen, Jr., Stanford