NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The 2022 Southland Bowling League Championship will take place Friday-Sunday at Colonial Bowling Lanes in Harahan, Louisiana
The double-elimination tournament will feature all eight league teams seeded by the most recent NCAA RPI rankings entering tournament weekend.
Updates for the Southland Bowling League can be found on the 2022 Southland Bowling League Championship homepage.
Vandy Earns 2 Seed
The Commodores earned the tournament’s No. 2 seed and will meet No. 7 seed Tulane in Friday morning’s opening round. Sam Houston State is the top seed with Arkansas State 3, Youngstown 4, Louisiana Tech 5, Stephen F. Austin 6 and Valparaiso 8 rounding out the field.
The top six seeds are all ranked among the nation’s top nine in the latest NTCA poll, once again demonstrating the depth and talent of the Southland.
Format Differs From Regular Season
The SBL is a double-elimination tournament using a best-of-three match format commonly called a mega-match. This is the system used at the NCAA Championship. It is not how regular-season matches were determined.
- Match 1: Five-person traditional team match
- Match 2: 5-game Baker using total pin fall
- Match 3: Best-of-seven Baker match play (Only if teams split first two matches)
Teams will first play a traditional team game followed by a 5-game, total pin Baker game. Should one team win both, the match is over. If they split, a best-of-seven Baker is played to determine the winner.
Dores are Defending Champs
Vanderbilt won its third Southland championship in 2021, defeating Louisiana Tech in the title match 4-2. Mabel Cummins was the tournament Most Valuable Player.
SBL History
Vanderbilt has won three conference crowns: 2015, 2017 and 2021. Arkansas State won in 2016 and 2018 while Sam Houston topped Vandy in 2019. There was no championship held in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
SBL Livestream:
The event will be featured live by Inside Bowling with Mike Flanagan providing live commentary. Matches can be viewed live HERE.
NCAA Championship Ramifications
The Southland tournament champion receives one of eight automatic conference qualifications for next month’s NCAA Championship. There are also eight at-large teams to be selected.
The NCAA Committee will select four top seeds that will each be assigned to a different regional and joined by three other teams. There will be four regionals each with four teams.
The regional 2022 sites are Arlington, Texas, Lansing, Michigan, Erie, Pennsylvania, and Rochester, New York. The winners of each regional advances to Columbus, Ohio, for the NCAA Championship on April 15-16.
Dores Dominate SBL Season Stats
The SBL has 30 team statistical categories and Vanderbilt leads 16 of those categories and is second in seven others. It also leads in the Team Composite Performance Index, a measure that combines the identified categories that, “a percentage of competitors that a team has outperformed.
Cummins, Peters Rank High Individually
Cummins ranked second in the Southland PCPI (Player Composite Performance Index) and freshman Paige Peters topped all SBL newcomers by finishing seventh.
Angelica Anthony was 13th and Caroline Thesier 14th. Additionally, numerous Commodore individuals were ranked in the 36 assorted indy categories.
