A team with national championship aspirations would be frustrated with a second place finish, and that is how the University of Arizona women’s golf team felt this week.

The No. 4 ranked UA fell to the No. 11 Virginia Cavaliers in the Women’s Golfweek Conference Challenge.

The team finished the tournament in Colorado on Tuesday. The Wildcats had to compete against 17 other schools as they tried to take the title.

“”We really struggled this week as a team,”” said head coach Laura Ianello. “”We went into the tournament wanting to win, and I am very disappointed. We have high standards and we were the best ranked team in the field, and unfortunately, as a team, we did not play well this week.””

Ianello praised Alejandra Llaneza, Margarita Ramos and Isabelle Boineau but said the rest of team really struggled. Llaneza and Ramos were able to finish in the top 10, placing sixth and seventh, respectively.

“”We really struggled with our short game, putting in particular,”” Ianello said. “”We have three weeks before we leave for the UNLV tournament, so we will be practicing on that.””

Throughout the tournament, the Wildcats went back and forth with Virginia — even taking a lead at one point.

“”We got to tip our hats to Virginia; they kind of out battled us,”” Silverstein said. “”They caught us pretty quick and lapped us with about six holes left, and we were kind of fighting it out for second.””

The next tournament for the Wildcats will be Oct. 25 – 27 in Las Vegas.

“”We need more consistency from this team,”” Silverstein said. “”We putted awful this week. We could not have putted any worse. That’s just not acceptable. The greens were very fast and very hilly and we were not able to make an adjustment to the speed of the greens and just made it very difficult on ourselves.””