Over the weekend, the Binghamton golf team participated in the two-round Lehigh Invitational in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. After a rough opening round left the Bearcats only a few shots ahead of the last-place team, Binghamton recovered in the second and final round to finish around the middle of the leaderboard.

In their final tournament of the fall season, the Bearcats shot a 619 to finish ninth out of 14 teams.

“I thought we were going to finish up a little bit higher,” said Binghamton head coach Bernie Herceg. “We tried to make a little bit of a move on the second day, but we didn’t play too solid the first round. In the second round, some of the guys were playing real well, and we scored a little bit better… [but] I don’t think we scored as well as we could have.”

Juniors D.J. Griffiths and Nacho Glagovsky finished tied for the highest-placing Bearcat at the event, both shooting a score of 152 to finish tied for 16th at eight over par. It was not the first time that the two earned that distinction. Griffiths finished as the highest-placing Bearcat twice before at the Alex Lagowitz Memorial Invitational and at the Cornell Fall Invitational, while Glagovsky finished atop the rest of his teammates at the Matthews Auto Collegiate Invitational, BU’s home tournament.

“For Nacho, he definitely started playing better in the second half of the season,” Herceg said. “He was inconsistent scoring-wise the first half, but we had three tournaments right out of the gate, and after that I think he settled in. His ball-striking got a little bit more consistent, and he started to putt a little bit better.”

Further down the individual leaderboard, junior Justin Lane’s performance was middle-of-the-road, yet consistent, as he shot a 79 on both days to finish tied for 42nd. Rounding out the Bearcat players were seniors and co-captains Ryan Rodriguez and Tom Mandel, who both finished in a tie for 49th with scores of 160.

The first round of the tournament saw some poor scoring across the board for Binghamton, with many Bearcats turning in multiple holes of double-bogey or worse. Among the five Bearcat golfers, there were 10 double bogeys and two triple bogeys. In contrast, the team garnered only eight birdies in the round, continuing a trend of inconsistent starts at invitationals.

“The talent is there for them,” Herceg said. “It’s a little bit more of a mindset [issue], getting off to a little bit of a better start and gaining a little more confidence, not having a bad hole here and there to start … There are some physical things that need to be improved upon when it comes to their scoring capabilities in the short game, but overall I would have to say that it’s more the mental side of things.”

In the second round, the Bearcats turned in a much-improved performance; their second-round score was 15 shots lower than their first-round tally, which was the largest margin of improvement from round to round in the invitational. The team doubled its birdie total from the previous round and limited its blunders to mostly bogeys. Griffiths led the charge, decreasing his shot total by eight to finish the round evenly.

The Lehigh Invitational was BU’s last event for the fall, as its next tournament does not occur until March. The team’s practice options are mostly limited to the indoors because of Binghamton’s coming winter weather, but Herceg plans on making the most of the facilities that are available to him and the team. He said he hopes to give the team some time off before getting back into the swing of things.

“The guys need a little bit of a break, but then we’ll start getting back into some things here,” Herceg said. “I know in another month we’ll be itching to already start playing again.”

The Bearcats’ next tournament is the Bobby Nichols Intercollegiate, hosted by Tennessee Tech. The three-day invitational will begin on March 15 from Sevierville Golf Club in Sevierville, Tennessee.