Buffaloes Men's Golf Places Seventh at AAC Fall Showcase

ADAIRSVILLE, Ga. — On Monday and Tuesday, the Milligan University men's golf team took part in the 2024 Appalachian Athletic Conference (AAC) Fall Showcase in Adairsville, Ga. at Barnsley Resort and Golf Club. As a squad, the Buffaloes managed to take home seventh place out of 15 competing programs.

Milligan boasted three players in the top 20 after the opening round on Monday, as Francisco de Bethencourt (T-5^th, +1), Garrison Barton (T-12^th, +4) and Manuel Gutierrez (T-17^th, +6) had wonderful opening rounds. Their efforts helped put Milligan in a tie for fourth place overall after the first 18.

It was de Bethencourt who posted a respectable +4 round in the second set of 18 holes, while the remainder of the roster had a much slower set of performances. Barton shot +8, while Gustaf Lundberg posted a +14 and Gutierrez went +17. Milligan was tied for 10^th of 15 teams in the second round alone, putting them at sixth place overall.

To finish off the event, it was another slow round, in which Barton posted the Buffaloes' top score at +7. For de Bethencourt, it was a +8 showing, and Gutierrez posted a +12. Those results led to an 11^th-place final round, which pushed them back to seventh overall for the tournament.

In the end, de Bethencourt finished tied for fifth as an individual with a +13, 229-stroke tourney. Barton would tie for 16^th with a tournament total of +19 and 235 shots. Gutierrez tied for 49^th and posted a +35 event with 251 strokes as the final of three Buffaloes who posted top 50 scores out of 90 participants.

The Milligan men's fall season is now finished, as they look ahead to the spring, where they aim to improve to compete among the top programs in the AAC.