Unbeaten VU advances at NCAA

April 12, 2018

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ST. LOUIS—The hunted became the hunter Thursday and the result was a pair of sparkling Vanderbilt victories at the NCAA Bowling Championship, pushing the Commodores into a Friday afternoon match against the winner of Friday morning’s Arkansas State-Sam Houston tussle.

Coach John Williamson had invested considerable time over the last month preaching a bowling version of The Art of War to his fourth-ranked Commodores.

“The whole message I was asking them to do today was just to compete,” the veteran Williamson said afterwards. “The outside bowling world doesn’t have much expectation of what we are able to do. Nebraska and McKendree had phenomenal seasons and we understand they have earned the attention. But we talked about straight out competing. We want to force the opponent to have to make shots; too often we’ve been the team that made the first mistake but today we put some pressure on the opponents.”

It worked.

Potential crisis No. 1: Vanderbilt grabbed a 2-0 lead in the best of seven Bakers to decide the Sam Houston match. The Kats stormed back to apparently seize momentum, tying the game at 2-2. Rather than buckle, Vandy regrouped and won the next two games and advance in the winner’s bracket.

Potential crisis No. 2: After winning the team game against No. 1 seeded Nebraska, the Commodores got off to a rotten start in the Baker games. How rotten? Vandy was down 52 pins after two of the five games and still trailed by 50 with two games left. Williamson gathered his troops…

“We weren’t bowling poorly against Nebraska, we just had a bad first Baker game,” Williamson said. “All we needed to do was string a few together. I told them before Game 4 that we didn’t need to get it all back (down 50 pins) now, just put a dent in the lead and we can win it in Game 5. And then they threw eight in a row.”

Those eight strikes produced a 255-201 win and not only wiped out the deficit, it gave Vandy a small lead that it enlarged in the final game to finalize one of the program’s more significant wins in recent years.

Vanderbilt began the day with a rotation of Jordan Newham, Kristin Quah, Samantha Gainor, Katie Stark and Maria Bulanova. The freshman Gainor may have been edgy in her NCAA debut and the `Dores inserted sophomore Emily Rigney in her place for the Baker games.

Rigney, a southpaw like Stark, came in white hot and stayed that way the entire day. Her 237 in the team game against Nebraska was critical in the 967-935 win.

The native of Australia was prepared to seize her opportunity.

“I had a good practice yesterday and I was getting myself ready today so when my name was called I was ready,” Rigney said. “I’ve had a few setbacks this semester so I was at the point where I had nothing else to lose. If sacrificing the bulk of the regular season for the big tournament at the end is worth it. After the first shot today I thought `I’ve got this.”

Rigney’s 237 closed with four in a row, which helped keep the talented Huskers at bay.

“In practice we’ve been working on high pressure situations,” Em reveals. “As coach calls it, `becoming comfortable with being uncomfortable’. I think I threw it well but it was definitely a good day for lefties.”

The senior Stark, who shined at this tournament a year ago as an all-tournament selection, agreed with her younger teammate.

“Emily and I are throwing it very well right now,” the Orlando redhead said, “but the pattern is also allowing us to play in a part of the lane where we’re both comfortable. Emily came in today and bowled amazing, she blew it out of the water.

“This is one of the first tournament’s that I can remember where we didn’t reach a point where we just gave up. We always felt we could come back if we kept truckin’ along and eventually we’d get in the groove. We just focused on ourselves, we’re using tunnel vision and focusing on our shots. We’re not thinking about what the other team is doing or not doing.”

Aside from Vanderbilt’s upset of Nebraska, there were no major shocks on the first day. Sixth-seeded St. Francis University and the eight seed, Lincoln Memorial — both making their NCAA Championship debut – were the first two ousted in the double-elimination format.

McKendree topped Arkansas State in one of the other marquee matchups and as a result, could potentially face Nebraska should the Huskers get by North Carolina A&T Friday morning.

Despite the bye, Williamson plans on taking his charges to watch the action and then take advantage of a brief practice window later in the morning.

“The last two times we were in this situation I let the team sleep in (last year’s NCAA and last month’s Southland) and we came out and bowled poorly. We’re not making that mistake again. We’re getting up and getting involved.”

Game time for the Commodores will be at 3:00 p.m., live-streamed by NCAA.com. Should the Commodores prevail, they would advance to Saturday’s championship game; if they fall short, there would be an “if necessary” game Saturday morning to determine which team would play for the national championship.

Spare shots:

The day got off to a rousing start when Sam Gainor converted “the Big 4” spare — the 4-7-6-10. One can watch a lot of bowling and not see that one made.

With the Sam Houston match wrapped up, Vandy inserted senior Ariana Perez into the lineup for Bulanova and the Wichita product responded with two strikes.

At one point in the Baker portion of the Sam Houston match, Vandy made 30 strikes in four sizzling games.

Many family and friends are in the bleachers wearing the Vanderbilt colors. The prize for the longest drive goes to Kristin Quah’s dad Hillary, who in coming from Singapore reminds us that he actually flew (and didn’t drive). His flight was delayed and he arrived in St. Louis late Thursday evening so he watched the excitement through a fog of jet lag.

Freshman Kelsey Abrahamsen got to throw a ball in the 10th frame after the Nebraska game was on ice.