A looooooooooong day of golf came to a stop just before 7pm Central at Riverton Point Golf Club in South Carolina on Sunday, and after 36 holes, YOUR Marquette Golden Eagles are out in front of the 2026 Big East men’s golf championship. As a team, the Golden Eagles are 11 shots under par through two of the three rounds of competition, and that gives them a two stroke lead over DePaul and a three stroke lead over Xavier.
If you were monitoring play through the shotgun start for the rain delayed first round through the continuation straight into the second round as the day went along, then what you saw all day long on Sunday is Marquette, Xavier, and DePaul all jockeying for the top of the leaderboard from about the ninth hole of the day onwards. Sometimes you’d check in and Marquette would be -12 and up four strokes, sometimes you’d check in and Xavier would be -10 and up one stroke, and so on. MU and XU at various points of the day appeared to be starting to pull away from DePaul, but the Blue Demons just kept hanging around long enough to be right in the thick of things heading into Monday’s final round.
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Marquette was led by Vinny Cervantes, who shot -1 on the first pass through the course, starting off on #4 and going forward from there for 36 straight holes. On his second trip through, Cervantes went -3, helped by birdies on #1 and #2 (which was really like #16 and #17 given his place in the shotgun start). That has him tied for fifth place on the individual leaderboard, and Johan Widal and Mischa Candinas are both just one stroke behind Cervantes at -3. That has them tied for 11th on the individual scoreboard, and that’s how Marquette is leading the team event: Multiple good, but not great, performances.
All due respect to Cayse Morgan, but he’s propping up Xavier’s -8 team score right now. Morgan came into the tournament as one of the favorites to win the individual title, and he’s paying that off. Xavier’s leader is -6 through two rounds, with Morgan doing most of his work with a -4 on his first 18 holes on Sunday. The Musketeers don’t have goofs behind him, with both AJ Wilhelm and Kyle Smith at -3 and in that tie for 11th with both Widal and Candinas.
DePaul’s spot in second place was put together by Dominic Lucchesi and Rohan Gopaldas, who are both tied for fifth right now at -4. Gopaldes had a better first round, as he was -3 on the first pass through the course on Sunday. Billy Gneiser did a lot of work to help the Blue Demons out on the second round, as he went -4 to get to just -1 on the day and in the tournament, but that’s the kind of thing you need to stay in competition for the team title.
The third and final round of the tournament will start at 7:30am Central time on Monday, but Marquette won’t get on the course until 8:25am. The Golden Eagles will be playing in threesomes with their counterparts from Xavier and DePaul, so everyone will have a good look at how everyone else is doing to keep their respective team in the thick of it as the day goes along. As was the case on Sunday, you can keep track of the scores on the live scoreboard brought to you by Scoreboard. If you want to watch what’s going on, you can head over to GKLive.tv and sign up for a free account to watch some static cameras as well as live commentary from the 18th green.
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