That said, "You always want to win," he said, adding he'd by lying if he didn't want to win, but Utah would have needed to score 49.675 on bars, statistically its lowest-scoring event this season, to have tied Yoculan's bunch that was so confident of winning it already had championship T-shirts available.

Georgia deserves all the credit, though, winning after losing its best all-arounder, Courtney Kupets, the Olympian who won NCAA championships the last two years, to a torn Achilles midway through the season.

Utah follows the fortunes of its own magnificent all-arounder, Ashley Postell. She was third in the NCAA all-around as a freshman, and the Utes took third as a team. She's been second in each of the last three years, and so has her team.

However, she ended her career team competitions scoring 39.75 to really pull the Utes into that runner-up spot again.

And that had Marsden also saying, "We didn't lose. We were second."

"Overall," said Postell, "we're just going to feel good about second." She mentioned that Florida, LSU and other teams were cheering for the Utes, and the Utes were cheering for them.

"I'm actually not so sad like I thought (after a third-straight second place). We did the best we could. We're happy," said junior Nina Kim, who posted a pair of 9.80s on vault and bars and a 9.85 on beam.

She admitted she and fellow junior Kristina Baskett were already talking about next year. In the hallway they were joking — "'Hey, do you feel the senior power?"' they asked each other. Kim said she thought the night "was really intense" in its competition with Stanford, LSU and, for a while, Alabama.

"We're not going home with our heads down. We had an awesome year, and this is kind of where we've been throughout the year, so we did what we've been doing. I think we had a great meet, and so did Georgia ," said Baskett. "Starting on beam is rough."

These 2008 championships wrap up tonight with the individual event finals at 4 p.m. MDT today. Postell, Baskett and Kyndal Robarts have opportunities to win national championships then. Postell is in three event finals, all but vault, even though she ended the season as the nation's No. 1 vaulter. Baskett is in bars and floor, and Robarts is in bars finals.

Team scores

Georgia 197.450
Utah 197.125
Stanford 196.750
Florida 196.700
LSU 196.350
Alabama 196.125

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E-mail: lham@desnews.com