My two cents: Things lining up for Arizona's women's golf team

Arizona’s women’s golf program has been the school’s most consistently successful team over the last 25 years. You can look it up.

The Wildcats, ranked No. 10 entering the NCAA championships Friday in Eugene, Oregon, have qualified for the finals 23 times in the last 25 years. They’ve finished in the top 10 in 14 of those seasons, and won NCAA championships in 1996 and 2000. They’ve also won eight Pac-12 titles.

Coach Laura Ianello’s club played the No. 1 schedule in the country this year. Their opponents had a scoring average of 72.86; Arizona’s average is 71.63.

And there’s some good karma at work. When the Pac-12 championships were held at the Eugene Country Club in 1991, 2000 and 2010, Arizona finished first twice and second.

To make the story a bit better, the UA’s leading golfer is a Tucsonan, junior Krystal Quihuis, a Salpointe Catholic grad and former state champion who enters the finals ranked No. 29 nationally.

Last year, Arizona reached the final group of eight that engage in a team match-play elimination series. To get there again, the team of Quihuis, Jessica Vasilic, Lindsey Weaver, Haley Moore and Gigi Stoll will have to play the way the Wildcats did in 2000, when the NCAA finals were at Crosswater Golf Course outside Bend, Oregon.

That year, led by national champ Jenna Daniels, Arizona won the title by 21 strokes. And one more thing: The Eugene Country Club is the “home course” of UA athletic director Greg Byrne, who grew up playing that course when his father, Bill, was Oregon’s athletic director.

If nothing else, the stars seem to have aligned for another deep UA run in the NCAA finals.