The Golden Eagles went +3 as a team and slipped to sixth place at the Urbana Regional after two rounds.
After two holes on Tuesday as Marquette men’s golf got the second round of the 2025 NCAA Regionals started, it wasn’t the best round ever for Big East Freshman of the Year Vincent Cervantes. The Golden Eagles started off on the back nine after going off on the front in the first round, and Cervantes bogeyed #11 to move to one-over-par.
Then he birdied five of the next nine holes on his way to a -4 on the day. At Atkins Golf Club in Urbana, that’s a 67, and that’s the best NCAA Regional round in Marquette men’s golf history. It beats the 68 put up by Brendan Cloete in 2015 as well as the 68 that Patrick Adler shot in the first round of this year’s regional.
The -4 on the day moved Cervantes up to eighth on the individual leaderboard by the time everyone was done playing. That means he’ll go into Wednesday’s final round of competition two strokes behind Michigan’s Hunter Thomson as the best individual player that’s not on one of the top five teams in the regional.
Yes, that’s right, Marquette is no longer tied for fifth in Urbana. Cervantes was the only one who had a great day on Tuesday, as Adler only shot even par and everyone else went over par. Mason Schmidtke got off to a bad start, putting up a double bogey and then a triple bogey on the first two holes, so from a certain point of view, his +8 after 18 holes was only a +3 on the final 16 of the round. That wouldn’t have been too bad for the whole 18, but that’s not what happened, unfortunately.
As a result, Marquette went +3 as a team on Tuesday and that leaves them at +4 overall through two rounds. The Golden Eagles sit in sixth place, five strokes behind Troy at -1 and five strokes ahead of North Carolina at +9. The top five teams advance to the championship round, so Marquette’s definitely not eliminated from contention at this point, not in a team scoring situation. It’s worth mentioning that Texas Tech is in fourth place at -2 overall after a +3 on Tuesday, and a six stroke difference isn’t that much when you’re navigating the scores of multiple collegiate golfers.
Of course, Illinois State and Pacific are six strokes behind Marquette in a tie for 8th right now, so the thing could swing the other way on Wednesday, too.
Marquette is scheduled to start play on the back nine again on Wednesday, with Mason Schmidtke set to tee off at 8:33am to get things started for the Golden Eagles. Marquette will be paired with Texas Tech and Troy, which means we’ll essentially have a tiny little mini-tournament going on to decide who gets the final two spots in the regional to advance. You can keep track of everything with the live scoreboard, which can be found right here.