<p>ST. LOUIS ? Sophomore Jason Leopoldo didn?t want to get up. <br/>Instead, he remained seated in disbelief at midfield after time ran out. <br/>Whoever could hold back the tears in the locker room, did. Those who couldn?t buried their heads. <br/>In a heartbreakingly close contest, eighth-seeded UCLA watched unseeded UCSB celebrate its first men?s soccer national title with a 2-1 victory in the championship game of the College Cup. <br/>?It just hurts,? senior Kiel McClung said. ?There?s no other way to put it; it just hurts.? <br/>The game came down to the final seconds, with UCLA creating multiple chances to equalize, but the Bruins couldn?t find the back of the net to push the game into overtime. <br/>It looked as if the Bruins were going to come back from a 2-0 deficit when Leopoldo scored in the 79th minute, making it a one-goal game and giving the Bruins hope. <br/><a target=_blank href=/slideshows/2006/12/04/msoccer/slideshow.html><img align=right src=/graphics/2006/12/04/msoccer_cover.jpg></a>?After the goal I scored, I thought we had some momentum, more than we?d had the whole game,? Leopoldo said. ?I definitely thought we?d get the second goal, but it didn?t come today.? <br/>The Bruins will likely remember several late opportunities for the second goal that slipped away. <br/>Freshman Kyle Nakazawa took a free kick in the 86th minute that was inches away from finding the foot of an open Sean Alvarado at the back post, UCSB goalkeeper Kyle Reynish made a diving stop on a free kick from defender Mike Zaher to deflect it to the side of the goal, and another UCLA shot deflected off of a UCSB player on the goal line and went over the bar. <br/>With UCSB?s first-ever national title in men?s soccer, the Gauchos keep the Bruins at 99 NCAA team titles. <br/>?We would have loved to have been the team that achieved that goal (of 100 titles),? UCLA coach Jorge Salcedo said. ?If we would have won, that would have been great, but unfortunately we?re not (the team to do it).? <br/>The Gauchos broke two streaks Sunday. They are the first unseeded team since Connecticut in 2000 to take the championship, and they beat the Bruins for the first time since Oct. 30, 1982. The last time the two teams faced each other, at UCSB on Oct. 5, UCLA won 3-1. <br/>While the Santa Barbara team came out looking stronger than it did in the Gauchos? semifinal game, UCLA was the exact opposite. The team from Westwood had a hard time getting into any kind of a rhythm in the early going. <br/>?We didn?t have a good game today, and it?s a bad day to play a poor game,? Salcedo said. <br/>UCSB wasted no time in getting the lead it would never relinquish. In the third minute of the match, midfielder Tyler Rosenlund created space along the touchline and found forward Nick Perera in front of the goal mouth. Perera capitalized on the opportunity to put the Gauchos up 1-0. <br/>UCSB would continue to put loads of pressure on UCLA in the first half, totaling eight shots to the Bruins? three, and controlled the pace and character of the game to its advantage. <br/>?We (normally) like to play around teams,? Zaher said. ?(But) they started dumping the ball, so we got excited and started dumping the ball. I mean, they have Andy Iro and some big guys back there versus David Estrada and Nakazawa. The air battle was to our disadvantage.? <br/>It was a combination of good defense and a lot of luck that kept the difference at just one goal going into the half. With the Gauchos pressuring for a second goal, Zaher went horizontal and vertical to volley the ball out and stop a possible one-on-one. <br/>The best defender in the half, however, might not have had a jersey on. The left post was UCLA?s best friend in the first half, with two shots from Rosenlund skimming along the ground and hitting off the post and out. <br/>On offense, the Bruins, playing into the Gauchos? style, had only one shot on goal in the first half. While the Bruins owned the second half against Virginia on Saturday, scoring four goals en route to the win, the Gauchos were the team that came out firing first in the second half on Sunday. With numbers on a counterattack in the 61st minute, Gaucho sophomore Eric Avila had an open shot from 14 feet out and put the ball past goalkeeper Eric Reed into the left side of the goal, giving UCSB a 2-0 advantage. <br/>Sunday?s championship match was the first game in the NCAA Tournament in which UCLA failed to score three goals, a total that would have given the Bruins the win. The Bruins were pressing for the equalizer literally into the final minute of play, until a Gaucho free kick put the ball deep into their territory with under 10 seconds left. <br/>After the game, the UCLA players sat in the locker room, mentally and physically exhausted and frustrated to come so close to their goal and have to settle for first runner-up. <br/>?To work this hard and play that many games to get second place (is) not what we wanted,? Alvarado said.</p><br><br><a href='; target='_blank'>;