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Stanford women's swim coach Lea Maurer will be thinking about this one for some time. Why, she'll wonder, couldn't we score three more points? Had the Cardinal accomplished that, it would be the 2010 national champion.

As it turned out, after three days of racing, only 2 1/2 points separated Stanford from being the NCAA champion. That honor went to a surprising Florida team, which was just one of many contenders. The Gators finished with 382 points while Stanford had to settle for second with 389.5 in arguably the closest women's championships in history. Cal was third with 363.

It was Stanford's highest finish in the NCAA meet since 2001.

Stanford came so agonizingly close to winning its first NCAA title since 1998. The Cardinal won five individual titles and finished second three times during the three-day meet at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind. Unfortunately for Stanford, this was the first year in the past 16 that the team did not have an All-American diver. Had one Stanford diver qualified for the finals, the Cardinal would have won the title.

Then again, Stanford did miss by only three points and any one of a number of swimmers could have made up the difference.

Stanford led after the first two days but scored no points in Saturday's first two events, the 1,650 fre and 200 back. That dropped the Cardinal into fifth place with five events remaining.

Stanford moved into third after the 100 free (with four scorers) and grabbed second after the 200 breast. When senior Elaine Breeden won the 200 fly in 1:52.39, Stanford was back in first place with just the platform diving and 400 free relay remaining.

"The NCAA is a relentless meet," Stanford coach Lea Maurer said. "This isn't something you could begin to script in fiction. We just came up 2½ points short, but it was a monumental finish."

The Cardinal, however, scored no points in diving while Florida had 27 and grabbed the lead with 350 points. Stanford took 339.5 points into the final relay.

The Cardinal won the 400 freestyle relay, but Florida, which had scored two finalists in the diving, needed only to finish fourth or better to win the national title. The Gators did, finishing third.

"We were close to perfect," Maurer said. "There's nothing I would change, I just wish I could give them a gold."

On the meet's final day, Elaine Breeden won the 200 butterfly for the third time in her career, one of just three swimmers ever to accomplish that feat, while Liz Smith was second in the 200 breast in a personal best of 2:07.50.

Julia Smit, the Cardinal's 26-time All-American, closed out her Stanford career by touching the wall first for a time of 3:12.32 in the meet's final event and relay. Smit, Betsy Webb and Kate Dwelley were all seven-time All-Americans at the meet.

Breeden won her third 200 fly in four seasons, repeating as a national champion after winning the event as a freshman.

Midway through the meet, the Cardinal moved back up from fifth and third with 36 points from the 100 freestyle with four competitors in the two finals. Smit and Dwelley finished sixth (48.15) and seventh (48.49) in the finals, while Sam Woodward (48.55) and Webb (48.57) were third and fourth in the consolation finals.

NOTES: Breeden also won 100 fly for the first time at this meet. She is the first Cardinal flyer to sweep the event since Misty Hyman in 1998, and is just the third swimmer in NCAA history to win the 200 fly three times or more in a career. Breeden now holds five of the top-nine times in NCAA history in the 200 fly, as her time of 1:52.39 was ninth. She also has the top two times, including the American record of 1:49.92, set at last year's Pac-10 meet. Breeden was an All-American five times, finishing her career with 24 certificates . . . Smit closed out her career with seven All-America awards for 26 in her career, two short of Catherine Fox and Misty Hyman's school record of 28. Smit won the 200 and 400 individual medleys over the first two days, and was a part of the 200 free and 400 medley national runnerup teams . . . Dwelley, with seven enters her senior season with 16, while Betsy Webb with seven this year, now has eight. Webb finished as a runner-up in the 50 free, and was on the two relays with Smit, as well top-16 finishes in the 100 backstroke and 200 medley relay.

-- Palo Alto Online Sports and Stanford Sports Information

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