Gosh, that was ugly.

But UCLA has been ugly before, this season. These Bruins never really dominated anyone important, and they never gave a sense of being able to become that team. No one paying any attention to this team ever could have thought they would get to the Final Four for the fourth consecutive year.

And they fell three games short. Villanova thrashed them, 89-69, on Saturday.

Scary game, for several reasons.

The only guys who showed up — and not even they played particularly well — were the three seniors, Darren Collison, Josh Shipp and Alfred Aboya. They scored 42 of the team’s 69 points. And now they’re gone.

Who leads this team next year? One of the underachieving freshmen? Jrue Holliday, Drew Gordon, Malcolm Lee? One of the middling upperclassmen? Nicola Dragovic,  James Keefe, Michael Roll?

What now looks like a bad recruiting class could put UCLA in a hole, next season. They might not even make the tournament, unless the kids improve massively and one of the incoming recruits tears it up — like Kevin Love did, rather than the way Jrue Holliday did.

Maybe the current freshmen will improve. Ben Howland is a fine coach. At the least, he ought to have a team that won’t give up 89 in the tournament and commit 20 turnovers against a decent team. Like this team did. But where does he go for leadership and crunch-time scoring?

Your guess is as good as mine and maybe as good as Howland’s, too.