There’s a great chance that this was the best postseason feat by any underdog in any sport of the calendar year.

Eastern Michigan’s women’s golf team finished its historic run in the NCAA Championships in California Tuesday after it beat #4 Texas in the quarterfinal round of match play and fell to #1 Stanford in the semifinal round.

No MAC team has ever made it this deep into an NCAA Championships event before.

No first-time participant in an NCAA Championship has ever made it as deep into the series as Eastern just did.

EMU itself has never even been to an NCAA Regional event before this season.

This team didn’t even win the MAC this year, and still made it this far as an at-large entrant. EMU, the #22 team in the country — up 100 spots from a year ago — came in second in the MAC tournament at the end of last month, qualified to go to the Tallahassee Regional two weeks ago, and finished fourth place there.

That would be good enough to get to the national stage, where they’d meet up with the country’s best remaining teams at Omni La Costa Resort and Spa in California.

EMU placed 10th of the 30 teams that made it to the national final through the first three days of stroke play, then climbed up to fifth place on the fourth round to survive two rounds of cuts and be one of the eight remaining teams in the country.

Then EMU beat Texas, which rosters the #1 golfer in the sport, to be one of four left standing.

Stanford blanketed the excitement, though, as EMU lost 5-0 in the semifinal match against the best team in the country.

Here’s how yesterday’s matches unfolded:

Erina Tan fell in a back-and-forth match to Texas’ Lauren Kim 4 & 2. Tan took 1-up leads on the third and fifth holes, and once again on the tenth hole, but Kim got back with a birdie to re-tie the match on the next hole, and took incremental leads on four of the next five holes as Tan shot a late trio of bogies.

Jasmine Leovao’s match-deciding putt for birdie on the 18th hole was the shot that put EMU into the next round. Cindy Hsu took a 1-point lead on holes #9-12, but shot out of it with a bogey on #13. The two shot even for the course up until the final hole, which Leovao was able to sink in four strokes.

Janae Leovao had her hands full with her match against the #1 player in women’s golf, Farah O’Keefe, but Leovao was ready. She birdied the second and third holes to take an early, 2-point lead, and out-paced O’Keefe, who couldn’t buy a birdie. O’Keefe was even for the course on the first 11 holes, and her bogies on #12 and #13 followed by Leovao’s birdie on #14 gave EMU the win before they saw the 15th hole.

Savannah de Bock and Angela Heo were tied through the first six holes before the two struggled at the 7th hole. Heo hit a six-stroke double-bogey, while de Bock’s bogey was good enough to take a 1-up lead. Heo double-bogied again two holes later as de Bock went up by three, and another bogey on #15 gave EMU another early victory.

The anchor match did not need finishing after Jasmine Leovao’s match-winning putt on her end. Sukterm trailed by a point after she bogied on the second hole, then a pair of Texas birdies on holes #4 and #5 put her down by three. But that gap closed back to 1 by hole #10, and the match would be tied back up on #16 before it ended early.

Tan took a 1-point disadvantage on the first hole and never recovered. Tan’s only birdie of the match versus her Stanford opponent came on the fifth hole, and bogied seven times.

Jasmine Leovao led for most of this match, but fell apart on the back-nine. She shot even or better on 10 of the first 11 holes, then bogied on a par-3 when Andrea Revuelta of Stanford birdied, and again on a par-4 three holes later. On the 16th, Leovao trailed for the first time as it took her five strokes to make the par-3 hole, then fell by a second point on the 17th as her opponent scored a birdie.

Another match that was decided and lost late. Janae Leovao was up by one through the first four holes as she hit a pair of birdies on the first two holes, but her Stanford opponent battled back as the two hit three birdies apiece through the first six holes. Paula Martín Sampedro bogied on #8 for Leovao to re-take the lead for four more holes, but couldn’t get under par the rest of the way. A Leovao bogey on #12 tied the match back up, and led by one through the 15th and 16th holes. They did not finish the final two holes.

Stanford’s Kelly Xu was even for the course on 12 of the 15 holes played, and was one-under on the fourth, sixth, and tenth holes; de Bock, even though she went up one on the second hole with a birdie of her own, she shot even for the course on 10 holes, was one-under par twice, but the match was lost on her two one-over par shots on holes #3 and #7.

Sukterm trailed the entire way in her match against Megha Ganne. Sukterm’s only birdie came in the 10th hole, which Ganne also was able to make under-par.

Author’s note: The Ypsilanti Eleven will not stop being a primarily football-focused newsletter, but I did say when I re-launched this newsletter that I’d be dipping my toes into more non-football coverage. Now it’s time for me to use the summer to prepare for the fall sports.