Mike Small has a simple message for his team as they prepare for Wednesday’s NCAA Championships: Enjoy it.

The eighth-year head coach, having guided Illinois to its first berth in the tournament since 2003, knows the burden of overblown expectations. The Illini have been relatively unheralded all season, and as they prepare to take on the nation’s best May 28-31 in West Layfayette, Ind., Small doesn’t want to add to the pressure.

“We believe that we can play with anybody,” Small said. “(If) you put expectations on yourself and it doesn’t work out for the first or second round, you’re putting pressure on yourself because you’re not meeting your expectations.”

Not that anyone’s sure what to expect. Compared to last year’s team, which missed the NCAAs altogether, only two of the five players competing at the Kampen Course have been with the team more than one year.

Freshmen Chris DeForest and Scott Langley, along with assistant coach Zach Guthrie, are in their first year with the Illini, as is Larry Blatt, a junior transfer from Mississippi.

As a result, earning a spot in the season’s final tournament has been a welcome surprise.

“It’s kind of like, in a sense, making it to the Final Four,” Guthrie said. “It’s a big deal to make it there, I think. With our guys, two freshmen, two sophomores, one junior, I think we made a pretty big statement just making it this year.”

Guthrie, a 2007 graduate of Western Illinois, credited the newly-built Demirjian Golf Practice Facility as a big reason the team has turned heads across the country. Unlike previous winters, when the team had less-than-modest facilities in Huff Hall’s basement, the team has been able to practice throughout the offseason.

“I don’t know if everybody in the top five (on the team) right now has improved their stroke average from last fall to this spring, but most everyone has, and I think Demirjian was a big deal with that,” Guthrie said. “Everybody made improvements in their swings; everybody made improvements in their short games and putting.”

The tournament’s site will also prove advantageous. The Illini played at Purdue’s Kampen Course last month at the Boilermaker Invite.

“It definitely helps getting to play there,” Langley said. “We play better on tougher golf courses. We’re a par-making team. We don’t make a lot of birdies, but we’re good at limiting our mistakes.”

Unlike more traditional tournament sites in the south or west, which feature Bermuda grass and softer conditions, the Pete Dye-designed Kampen Course has bent grass, which Illinois is well accustomed to.

“You have to take into account firmer greens where it’s going to roll out, chipping, everything’s a little bit differente’re used to that,” Guthrie said.

However, comfort is hard to come by when a young, inexperienced team tees it up in the biggest tournament of the year. Small wants his players to simply take in the experience.

“If you’re not enjoying it, not grabbing hold of it and embracing it, it’s going to be tough,” Small said.