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Junior Hannah Jun tied for 59th place at the NCAA Championships in her second tournament back fro

Their national-championship hopes had long since vanished and the narrow and tormenting Scarlet Course had gotten the best of their psyches and their scorecards. Friday’s final round of the NCAA Women’s Golf Championships in Columbus, Ohio, didn’t offer the Bruins the chance to catch the leaders and claim UCLA’s illustrious 100th NCAA title. It was a tad too late for that.

Instead it afforded them a final opportunity to play like the second-ranked team in the country, one last chance to pick up their golf clubs and put down their expectations.

Sophomore Amie Cochran and junior Hannah Jun seized it, the rest of the UCLA women’s golf team didn’t, and the Bruins only inched up the leaderboard to finish in 11th place with a collective total of 55-over par on Friday.

“For a couple of players it was a much better day,” UCLA coach Carrie Forsyth said. “Overall, it was a better day. But we still had three players not play as well as they hoped. We’re all still disappointed.”

Its finish and shot total the highest of the 2006 season, UCLA gathered for a brief time near the 18th green after its round before packing up the team van and heading back to the hotel.

It was in those confines, which proved to be much friendlier than the Scarlet Course, where the Bruins watched together – online – as the championship trophy, which was theirs only two years ago, pass once again into their opponents’ hands.

The engraver didn’t have to wait too long to start chiseling Duke’s name onto the championship hardware on Friday. The Blue Devils (15-over par), the first repeat champions since 1998, finished a comfortable 10 strokes ahead of second-place USC and an unfathomable 40 strokes in front of UCLA.

“You never anticipate having your worst event of the season at the NCAA Championships,” Forsyth said. “We just never caught a break.”

Forsyth said the Bruins, who arrived in Columbus on May 19, the Friday preceding the tournament, enjoyed very strong practice rounds leading up to the event.

Yet as soon as the NCAA Championships officially commenced, so too did UCLA’s struggles.

The Bruins found themselves tied for 9th after the first round, 11th after the second round and 13th after the third round.

It took until the fourth and final round for two Bruins to piece together strong rounds on the same day, as Cochran and Jun both flirted with red figures before eventually settling for even-par 72s.

But that wasn’t nearly enough to reclaim what was lost days earlier – a shot at UCLA’s 100th NCAA Title.

Of the Bruins’ 20 individual rounds during the NCAA Championships, only five bested 4-over par (76). In comparison, the champion Blue Devils didn’t card a round higher than 5-over par (77) for the duration of the four-round tournament.

“I think for the younger players, it’s a little tougher to swallow,” said Forsyth referring to freshmen Tiffany Joh and Jane Park, who finished in ties for 68th and 83rd, respectively.

“For the rest of us, we’ve had great NCAAs before, so the freshmen were particularly disappointed,” Forsyth said.

Only two years ago, it was the Bruins who had to make special accommodations to bring the championship trophy back home to Westwood – the overhead bins on the plane were barely large enough.

Last season, the Bruins finished a close second behind Duke.

That’s what makes this season’s 11th-place finish with conceivably a stronger team difficult to account for.

But Forsyth is trying.

“Even on a few days of thought, I think there are things we can do in the future to be better prepared and sharper when we go into nationals,” Forsyth said. “I thought we didn’t play well at regionals, and to do the same thing at nationals was disappointing. A lot of it is mental. A lot of it is youth. A lot of it is inexperience.

“In the end, with a little more experience, we can learn from this and be better for it.”