Jan. 21, 2018
READING, PA—A valiant Vanderbilt team battled defending national champion McKendree down to the last frame of the last game before being edged out for the championship at the Kutztown Invitational Sunday afternoon.
The Commodores, employing a lineup with elements of inexperience, gave the veteran Bearcats all they wanted before bowing, 4-3, in the title match. Vanderbilt had beaten fifth-ranked Sam Houston in the semi-final match by the same score, ending the three day tournament with a 10-3 won-loss mark.
“As a coach, you want to see progress from tournament to tournament and I felt we made a significant step today getting to the final match,” said Coach John Williamson. “That win over Sam Houston wasn’t necessarily pretty but we had some people make some big shots in a highly competitive match. And in the championship match, we have always said we want the game in our control with the ball in Maria’s (Bulanova) hands. We had that and today it just didn’t work out. That’s competitive athletics.”
The Commodores are not about moral victories but Williamson saw tangible progress with this finish.
“Last week (a third place finish at Mid-Winter) I told the team afterwards that I expected they would bowl well in the consolation game because I thought they viewed themselves as a third-place team. We needed to believe that a tournament championship goes through us and today I saw that. Last November we played the same Sam Houston team in Delaware and got blown out of the water. Our goal is to peak in late March and April.”
Today’s semi-final was a back and forth tussle. Vanderbilt dropped the first game before winning the next three to seize a 3-1 advantage in the best of four. But the talented Bearkats (there were two Bearcats/Bearkats today!) fought back with a pair of 226 games to knot the score. Vandy won a high-end seventh game, 238-225, by throwing strikes from the sixth to the tenth.
The McKendree match was similar. Vanderbilt dropped the first game, won the next two and lost the next two, finding itself down 3-2. The Commodores, now using a lineup of Adel Wahner, Kelsey Abrahamsen, Kristin Quah, Jordan Newham and Bulanova, took Game 6 to tie it and force another 10 frames. As top seed, the Bearcats had lane choice and the teams were close the entire way, coming down to the 10th when a Commodore win was possible. Close but no cigar.
“Give McKendree a lot of credit,” Williamson said. “They played well, they had the front seven twice as I recall. There is a reason they are the defending champions.”
Williamson was once again impressed with the performance of Newham, the junior from Aurora, Ill.
“Jordan made some really big shots in key situations to set up Maria,” Williamson noted. “And she shot her spares very well; I think she only had two missed makeables the entire weekend.”
Quah was named to the all-tournament second team based on her play in Saturday’s team games.
Vanderbilt is off next weekend and returns to competition Feb. 2 at the Prairie View Invitational in Arlington, TX.
Black and Gold Trivia: The Commodores flew to Baltimore en route to Reading Thursday and made a slight detour to visit the historic Civil War battlefield at Gettysburg, considered to be the turning point in the War Between the States.
