JACKSONVILLE, Fla.—Villanova will have its largest contingent of men's athletes – five total – at the outdoor NCAA Championships during the Marcus O'Sullivan head coaching era after four Wildcats punched their tickets to the national meet during the final night of men's competition at the NCAA East Preliminary. Junior Liam Murphy (Millstone, N.J.) and sophomore Sean Donoghue (Dublin, Ireland) advanced out of the same race in the 1500 meters, while later in the evening senior Sean Dolan (Ewing, N.J.) and fifth year Malik Cunningham (St. Andrew, Jamaica) qualified less than an hour apart in the 800 meters and the triple jump. They join senior Haftu Strintzos (Melbourne, Australia) who qualified for the national championships in the 10,000 meters earlier in the week.
 
Murphy, Donoghue and Dolan were each automatic qualifiers in their respective events on Friday night, while Cunningham secured his spot in the national championships with a huge jump on his final attempt. The NCAA Championships take place in Austin, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas from June 7-10, with men's competition taking place on Wednesday, June 7 and Friday, June 9. The entire meet will be broadcast live on ESPN2, with additional coverage available on ESPN+ each day.
 
Friday night's events at Hodges Stadium on the University of North Florida campus made for as successful an evening as the Wildcats have had in the last several years at the NCAA East Preliminary meet. In addition to the four national qualifiers, fifth year distance runner Evan Addison (Collegeville, Pa.) ran in the national quarterfinal round of the 3000 meter steeplechase and had a strong showing in which he moved up five spots from his finish at the same meet last year.
 
Murphy is the fastest qualifier coming out of the East region in the 1500 meters after he won the second of two quarterfinal heats in 3:48.35. The top seven finishers all came from that heat, including five automatic national qualifiers and two athletes who advanced on time. Murphy closed with a bell lap of 53.22 and crossed the finish line nearly a full second ahead of the runner-up from Iona.
 
Donoghue made a surge in the final 50 meters to ensure a finish in the top five. His official time was 3:49.50 and it took official splits to show that he finished a mere thousandth of a second ahead of Evan Dorenkamp from Penn State. There was a gap of less than three-tenths of a second separating the second through seventh runners across the line. This is the first time that either Murphy or Donoghue have qualified for the NCAA Championships in an individual track event during their careers.
 
The first heat of the 800 meters saw Dolan advance to the NCAA Championships for the second straight year. He finished third in his heat in 1:49.89 and grabbed the final automatic qualifying spot from the race by a margin of just over a quarter of a second. Only one on-time qualifier came out of that first heat. Dolan finished fifth in the 800 meters at the NCAA Championships last year and has also run at the indoor NCAA Championships in each of the past three seasons.
 
Friday night closed with the top two flights of the triple jump. Cunningham had previously been an NCAA Championships qualifier indoors in 2022 but was seeking his first outdoor national berth. The top 12 finishers from an initial field of 48 athletes moved on to Austin and Cunningham finished seventh overall to comfortably secure his spot.
 
Cunningham recorded a jump of 15.55 meters on his second of three attempts and was in 12^th place at that point in the competition. By the time he took his third jump he had dropped to 14^th place and nine centimeters outside the cut line for the top-12. Cunningham raced down the runway and got off a clean jump on his third attempt, then had to wait until the jump was measured and the results popped up. He smiled and gave a thumbs up when the result came up as 15.94 meters, surging him into sixth place and comfortably in the field of NCAA qualifiers with relatively few jumps remaining in the competition. Only one other athlete passed him the rest of the way and he wound up seventh overall to officially punch his ticket to Austin.
 
The quarterfinal heats of the 3000 meter steeplechase came immediately after the 1500 meters. Addison raced in the second heat and posted a time of 9:07.78 to finish 11^th in his section and 35^th overall. He ran in the middle of a tight pack for most of the race and wound up coming in five spots ahead of where he finished last season when he made his debut at the East preliminary meet.
 
Villanova concludes its stay in Jacksonville on Saturday with the final day of women's competition. The team's event schedule features the high jump at 2:30 p.m., the quarterfinal round of the 3000 meter steeplechase at 5:40 p.m. and the quarterfinal heats in the 800 meters at 7:05 p.m.