In its first home event since hosting the America East championship in 2007, the Binghamton University golf team finished this weekend’s BU Fall Invitational in fifth place with a two-round total of 601. Junior Bryce Edmister led the Bearcats with a career-best second-place finish, recording back-to-back scores of 72. Laval University took first in the event, which was held at the Links at Hiawatha Landing in Apalachin, N.Y.

“We haven’t hosted an event in a while … so we were looking forward to having the event, showcasing our golf course, and of course we [wanted] to win the event,” BU head coach Bernie Herceg said. “It was a little discouraging because we didn’t accomplish our goal but we had a couple positives with Bryce [Edmister] and Josh [Holling] playing real well.”

Holling entered the event riding the momentum from his career-first individual title at the Cornell Invitational, where Binghamton captured the team title for the fourth consecutive year. Holling finished the BU Invitational tied for fifth, bouncing back from a Day 1 score of 75 to post a team-best 71 in the final round.

Edmister finished four strokes behind tournament winner Ujo Coussaud of Laval, who wrapped up the weekend four under par. The outing marked the third time this season that Edmister has recorded a top-10 finish.

“He’s without a doubt our No. 1 player, and he played well again this week and tied for second in an 81-person field,” Herceg said of Edmister. “It was pretty impressive, but I know he’s even still discouraged. I know he wants to have some better scores. Even though he came in tied for second he was there to win it.”

Freshman Jesse Perkins, sophomore Jack Sedgewick and seniors David Cellura and Ryan Prinzo all tied for 44th to round out the scoring for BU. The four finished with a two-day total of 157.

On Binghamton’s B team, freshman Brandon Smith tied for 16th overall, a personal best. The rookie posted a 77 on Day 2 after an impressive first round score of 72. He finished with a career-best total of 149.

“[Smith] had a great round [Sunday] and followed up with a pretty good round [on Monday],” Herceg said. “Hopefully he’ll gain more experience from that and help us out in the future. We’re looking for good things out of Brandon to be one of our top players in the future so it’s great to see him have a good tournament.”

Binghamton is set to resume play on Oct. 13 and 14 at the Big 5 Invitational, hosted by Temple University.