Marquette Golf Enters Big East Championship As The Favorite

Mason Schmidtke leads the Golden Eagles to South Carolina. | Credit: Marquette University

Somewhat quietly, head coach Steve Bailey has built Marquette men’s golf into the dominant program in the Big East. The Golden Eagles head into this weekend’s 2026 Big East Championship with five conference titles in the past 10 tournaments, which includes two of the last three in 2023 and 2025. That 2023 title came at Riverton Pointe, the same course that will host this year’s event, by the way. Along the way, Marquette has finished as the team runner up at the conference championship three additional times in that 10 tournament stretch, and if we go back one more year, that’s nine #1 or #2 finishes in 11 Big East meets.

Why do I go through this history for you? Because the Big East Championship starts at 7am Central time on Saturday, May 2, and Marquette is clearly the favorite to win the event.

Marquette is ranked #70 in the Scoreboard national rankings as I type this up on Friday morning. Xavier is the only other team in the top 100 at #94. No one else is north of #115 and seven teams are somewhere at #150 or lower.

Per Marquette’s own check on the rankings, the Golden Eagles will head to Riverton Pointe Golf & Country Club in Hardeeville, South Carolina, with the only team that has all five men in the top 600 oof the Scoreboard national rankings. In fact, MU is the only team with three guys in the top 600, as Butler is the only other squad with two in the top 600.

We can’t say that Marquette is the favorite to take the individual title at the Big East Championship. Mason Schmidtke goes into the weekend as Marquette’s top competitor at #280 in the national rankings, but Xavier’s Cayse Morgan (#195) and Creighton’s Grant Feldman (#275) have an edge on him. Golf’s weird though, and sometimes it’s more about who plays to the course in front of you than anything else. If nothing else, Schmidtke comes into the event with experience playing at Riverton Pointe, as .