SCOTTSDALE — For the second time in three years, the Arizona Wildcats stunned the nation’s top seed in the quarterfinals of the NCAA Golf Championships.
The Wildcats turned their 2018 upset into a national championship. This year, they fell just short.
Gile Bite Starkute took down Stanford’s Angelina Ye 1-up in extra holes Tuesday, nailing a 30-foot birdie putt from the edge of the green, and the eighth-seeded UA stunned the top-seeded Cardinal 3-2 in match play at Grayhawk Golf Club in Scottsdale.
The Wildcats lost in the afternoon semifinals, however, falling 3-1 to fourth-seeded Ole Miss. The Rebels advance to play third-seeded Oklahoma State in Wednesday’s final; the Cowboys beat defending champion Duke 5-0 in Tuesday’s other semifinal.
“I'm insanely proud of these young women — they've had a heck of a season,” UA coach Laura Ianello said . “… We didn't play phenomenal in the stroking portion (of NCAA Tournament), but I knew we had it in us to come out for match play. We made a lot of birdies this morning to beat the No. 1 seed, Stanford, and that's all you can ask — for them to fight.”
And fight they did, right to the bitter end. Yu-Sang Hou was the only Wildcat still on the course when Ole Miss clinched the mass. She was 2-up in a match that eventually counted toward the Wildcats' final score.
Tuesday's semifinal between Arizona and Ole Miss began well after 2 p.m. because of how long it took Ole Miss to dispatch Texas in the morning quarterfinals. The Rebels’ Andrea Lignell needed 22 holes to beat her Longhorns opponent, while Smilla Sonderby needed 21.
If Ole Miss was tired or overwhelmed by the desert heat as it began the afternoon round, it didn’t show.
The Wildcats, meanwhile, seemed worse for the wait. During the extra-long delay between matches, they ate, hydrated and warmed up. Yet Ianello noticed something was missing when they started back up.
“I do feel like maybe we lost a little bit of that momentum coming off of that high that we felt, because we did have to wait so long on them," she said of Ole Miss. "With Ole Miss, we caught them on a high. They got hot early we were down and a lot of matches but, but at the end we fought back and had a chance and sadly, just came up one hole short.”
Kennedy Swann led Arizona’s Vivian Hou from the first hole on, winning 3 and 2 to give the Rebels a 1-0 lead. Arizona’s Therese Warner then topped Chiara Tamburlini 2 and 1 to even the match, 1-1.
The match between Lignell and Starkute, the morning round’s two heroes, loomed large. Lignell was 2-up on Starkute through 11 holes before the Wildcats’ sophomore made a push; Starkute won No. 12 to go 1-down, and then the two halved Nos. 13-17. On hole number 16, Starkute found the lone bush on the hole — just as she did earlier in the day on 18 against Stanford.
This time, she wasn’t as fortunate — Starkute had to stand in the bush to attempt her shot, and nearly chunked it. She recovered to stay alive and play another hole.
“I was literally in the tree,” Starkute laughed. “It was bad club selection, that's for sure off the tee. Just making a bogey there I'm really happy with that. It felt amazing. The shot out of the tree was not that good.”
When the two also halved No. 18, Ole Miss got the point — needing to win just one of the three remaining matches to advance.
The Rebels clinched minutes later, when senior Julia Johnson topped Arizona’s Ya Chun Chang 2 and 1. Her par putt on No. 17 ended the Wildcats’ season.
“The fact that we just kept it going until basically last hole it's amazing — like all fighters, all fighters,” Starkute said of her teammates.
Regardless of the end result, Starkute’s shot to sink Stanford earlier in the day will go down as one of the biggest in program history.
Starkute and Ye were all-square on 18 when Starkute was forced to take a penalty shot after hitting her drive into a bush. Yet the Wildcats’ surging star managed to halve the hole after Ye three-putted, taking their showdown — and the quarterfinals themselves — to extra holes.
The two played a winner-take-all hole No. 10, and were both on the green in two shots. Ye put her third shot, a massively long putt, to within a few feet of the hole. Starkute then one-upped her, holing the 30-footer to win the match. The Wildcats mobbed the Lithuanian before Starkute could pull her ball from the cup.
Starkute told Golf Channel that she knew Arizona’s quarterfinal match was going to come down to her.
“More pressure,” she said, “but not bad pressure.”
After the loss to Ole Miss, she added: “Sometimes there is pressure where you feel nervous, sometimes there's pressure when you just know that you're going to make it. That pressure is the best pressure and I think, yeah, it was on the whole entire round — and our coaches called it heart, and I think that's not as much as pressure but heart.”
Seeded eighth out of eight teams as the NCAA Championships advanced from stroke play to match play, the Wildcats did more than just hang with the nation’s top-ranked team — they led for most of the morning round. Vivian Hou beat Sadie Englemann 2 and 1, and her sister, Yu-Sang, topped Aline Krauter 5 and 3. Chang and Warner lost their morning matches 4 and 3 and 3 and 2, respectively.
The Wildcats were looking for their second women’s golf championship in the last three years. Haley Moore took down Alabama in the 2018 final by hitting a similarly long putt when it counted. Arizona was seeded eighth that year, and — like in 2021 — upset the top-ranked team in the quarterfinals to advance. The team it beat in the semifinals that year? Stanford.
After winning last week's Pac-12 Championships, the Wildcats are the No. 4 seed in the Cle Elum Regional in Washington. UA coach Jim Anderson thinks it'll be an advantage for the team.
