Peyton Wilhoit named MVC Golfer of the Year. Luke Gannon earned All-Conference honors.
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CAPE GIRARDEAU, Mo. — The Southern Illinois men’s golf team ended its season with a second-place finish at the Missouri Valley Conference Championships at Dalhousie Golf Club on Tuesday. SIU has finished first or second in the MVC in three of the last four seasons.
Bradley (+19) won its first-ever league title and maintained a comfortable lead throughout all three rounds, besting the Salukis (+34) by 15 strokes. The Braves took home the top three spots on the leaderboard between Drake Bushong (+1), Michael Mounce (+4) and Ethan Brue (+4).
“You can’t take anything away from what Bradley did,” said SIU head coach Justin Fetcho. “They played this golf course very, very well. We know how difficult this place can play and they put up some really good scores and went out and took it and earned it.”
The Salukis shot a 292 team score in today’s final round, their best 18-hole score of the tournament, but they entered the day trailing Bradley by 19 strokes and could only shave four strokes off the deficit.
“Coming down the stretch we put together as strong a fight as we possible could have,” Fetcho said. “It was just too little, too late at that point. Our guys can leave here with their heads high knowing they gave it all they had. When we didn’t have a chance to win (on the back nine) we could’ve gone through the motions, but they kept fighting, kept grinding and I’m proud of that effort.”
Southern’s top scorer was Luke Gannon (+5) who finished tied for fourth and earned All-Conference honors for the second time in his career. In earning his first career top-five finish, Gannon was a model of consistency, with nine birdies and only one double bogey throughout 54 holes. He was joined in the top 10 by Hunter York, who also had nine birdies in the tournament — second most in the field of 45 golfers.
“Hats off to Bradley, they played really well this week,” Gannon said. “They were tough to beat. We thought if we came out early and got off to a hot start, it might put some pressure on, but they held us off.”
The Salukis had strong performances today from Frankie Thomas (+18) who made four birdies on his last five holes to finish even-par on the day, and Peyton Wilhoit (+16), who had the team’s best round of the tournament with a one-under par 71. Although he finished tied for 21st place in the tournament, Wilhoit became the first player in school history to win the MVC’s Golfer of the Year award. He was an eight-time winner of the league’s Golfer of the Week award, had six Top 10 tournament finishes and was voted onto the All-Conference team. Dirk Kuehler (+10) also had a solid tournament performance, placing 11th, his season-best tournament finish.
“When you know that your season is over, it’s a disappointing time for everybody,” Fetcho acknowledged. “But like I tried to tell everybody on the 18th green after we got done, it doesn’t feel good right now, but we accomplished a lot this year and we can’t let this one tournament define our entire season. When we have time to sit back and look at it, we’ll realize just how much we accomplished. It’s just a tough feeling right now.”
TEAM SCORES
1 Bradley University 298 289 296 883 +19
2 Southern Illinois 307 299 292 898 +34
3 Drake 304 310 287 901 +37
T4 Illinois State 309 297 299 905 +41
T4 Missouri State 309 302 294 905 +41
6 Valparaiso Univ. 317 296 318 931 +67
7 Evansville 324 308 304 936 +72
8 Loyola U.- Chicago 328 306 316 950 +86
9 Northern Iowa 323 316 312 951 +87
SIU SCORES
T4 Luke Gannon (2) 76 72 73 221
T9 Hunter York (5) 75 74 76 225
T11 Dirk Kuehler (3) 75 74 77 226
T21 Peyton Wilhoit (1) 82 79 71 232
T28 Frankie Thomas (4) 81 81 72 234
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