Paul Apyan was happy with the way he scrambled Saturday, knocking down some testy par putts on the way to a 69 in the second round of the 72nd Signal Mountain Invitational golf tournament.

Like a good pitcher without his best stuff, Apyan made do with what was working and kept himself in contention.

“Yesterday I should have gone lower, but today on (Nos.) 5, 7, 8 and 9 I made putts outside of six feet for par to save the round,” said the former Hixson High standout, who opened the tournament with a 68.

Apyan’s 2-under-par round matched that of leader Michael Morrison, who heads into today’s final round at 10 under. Apyan is five strokes back with a two-day total of 137.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to go down and put up a number and make it interesting,” Apyan said. “That’s obviously going to be really tough after (Morrison shot) a 63 on Friday.”

Even if Apyan mounts a monster comeback, this will always be the weekend that could have been. Not at Signal Mountain Golf & Country Club, but over at Council Fire Golf Club, where the NCAA East Regional was held.

Apyan’s sophomore season at Southern Miss ended with the team’s second-place finish last month at the Conference USA tournament, and he tied for third individually. It was the best team finish in the program’s history, but it wasn’t quite good enough for the Golden Eagles to advance to an NCAA regional for the first time.

“It hurts, but we know what we’ve got to do as a team next year to get in it,” said Apyan, who averaged a team-best 73.3 strokes per round this season. “It could have been one or two shots throughout the season that kept us from getting in, you never know.”

Showing some conference pride, Apyan went to Council Fire on Wednesday and offered some pointers to the players from UAB, which went on to finish fifth and qualified for the NCAA Championships, and the University of Memphis.

“I went around all 18 (holes) with the UAB guys and then I got 13 holes, I think, with the Memphis guys,” he said. “Even though we couldn’t go, I still have a bunch of friends (on those teams) and I still tried to help out our conference.”

Apyan closed his round with a birdie on No. 18. His long drive up the right side of the fairway left him with a short iron to the green. The pin was tucked a couple of paces behind the front-right bunker and Apyan’s second shot came down about six feet beyond the pin.

Apyan sank the putt for a birdie, something he’ll likely need to do often today to have a shot at winning.

“I’m going to have to be more aggressive than I was in the first two rounds,” he said.

The mountaintop was buzzing Friday after Morrison’s opening-round 63, but he wasn’t quite as sharp with the putter Saturday. He three-putted from the fringe on the par-5 ninth and three-putted from about 20 feet on the par-3 17th.

“I played pretty solid except for those two holes,” said Morrison, who is going for his fifth win in the tournament on his old home course.

Because bad weather is expected this afternoon, groups will tee off from both the first and 10th tees this morning.