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Illinois men's golf team falls short of NCAA final

Illinois reached the Final Four of the NCAA men's golf tournament Tuesday.

Unfortunately, for the third straight year, that's where the season ended for coach Mike Small's perennial powerhouse.

The Illini qualified for the match-play climax to the tourney for the sixth time in the past seven years and got through the quarterfinals for the third straight time Tuesday morning.

That was even easy. The first three players Small sent out - Eduardo Lipparelli, Giovanni Tadiotto and Nick Hardy - all won their matches to eliminate Southern California.

In the afternoon, against Oklahoma in the semifinals, it wasn't so easy.

The Illini lost their first three matches and - even though veterans Dylan Meyer and Hardy still were on the course and in position to win their matches - another impressive season was over.

It'll be the Sooners taking on defending champion Oregon for the national title starting Wednesday at 2:10 p.m.

In the other semifinal, Oregon knocked out Vanderbilt, which earned the No. 1 match-play seed in the 72-hole stroke play qualifying portion of the tournament. Oklahoma, the No. 2 seed, dispatched the No. 3 Illini to reach the final for the first time.

"Our problems started at the first hole. We didn't do very well, whether it was fatigue, emotion, nerves," Small said. "We didn't control the ball in the wind. We were always playing catch-up. We didn't play like we had been playing."

A Final Four finish in the national championship reflects a great season, and this one may be considered a surprise. Illinois played without a senior on the roster and had two freshmen in the tournament lineup.

"This was a team that overachieved," Small said. "Yes, we could have won easily, but this has still been a great year. The results may have been the same (as the last three years), but the fun is in the journey. People thought we'd be rebuilding this year, but we've sustained this level of play for eight to nine years."

"We knew what we came here for," Hardy said. "Unfortunately, it was the same (result). We can't seem to get by this (semifinal match), but it's still been a great season."

Though Small had a very young team, the Illini had one thing that was missing in their previous runs to the NCAA finals. For the first time they were the home team. The gallery was filled with Illini fans, but they couldn't get their team over the hump.

"It's tough not to win, but I'll take away from it how awesome the fans were," Small said. "There have never been consistent crowds like this at the national championship."

"The fans were amazing," Meyer said, "and that meant everything,"

Wednesday's championship match concludes a two-week run of the best in college golf at Rich Harvest, a private facility with a brutal 18 holes designed by owner Jerry Rich. This was only the third year that the men's and women's finals have been played back to back on the same course.

The NCAA men's event was played on a Chicago course for the fifth time, but the first since Conway Farms in Lake Forest hosted in 1997.

The women, playing their 33-year-old national championship in Chicago for the first time, started May 19 and endured brutal weather for six days before Arizona State defeated Northwestern in the title match.

As was the case with the NU women, Illinois was the only local team in the men's competition. The Illini finished third in stroke play with Meyer, shaking off a bout of ulcerative colitis, tying for sixth as an individual.

Meyer will bid for a berth in the U.S. Open at Monday's sectional qualifier in Springfield, Ohio, and also will defend his Western Amateur title at Skokie Country Club later this summer.

• Follow Len on Twitter @ZiehmLen.

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