The Marquette golf team (290-306-291–887) finished in second place in the 2018 BIG EAST Tournament, placing three strokes behind the Georgetown Hoyas (289-304-291–884).

Freshman Hunter Eichhorn claimed the individual title, tallying a final score of 2-under-par and becoming the second straight Marquette freshman to win the individual BIG EAST Men’s Championship after Matt Bachmann did last year.

“I hit the ball pretty well today,” Eichhorn said. “Of course I’m a freshman so you wouldn’t say experience, but I’ve been through a lot of these situations over my career. I know what my body does under those situations.”

Head coach Steve Bailey said couldn’t be more impressed with his young star’s toughness throughout the tournament.

“I’m really proud of him,” Bailey said. “He’s been on this stage before and he seems to step his game up a little more in these moments. Hats off for him for getting us to this point.”

Bailey sees the defeat as a teaching moment heading into the 2018-’19 season, in which seven of eight golfers will return to the team.

“We just said we’re going to walk out of here with our heads up,” Bailey said. “It’ll sting for a little bit and take us a while to get over it, but we’ll bounce back from it. We put ourselves in that position and so we look forward to that next opportunity to go at it and compete again.”