Four Southland Bowling League Teams in NCAA Championship Field
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. – Four Southland Bowling League teams were selected Wednesday to compete in the 2016 NCAA Bowling Championship held in April. Arkansas State, Vanderbilt, Sam Houston State and Stephen F. Austin will represent the Southland Bowling League in the NCAA Championship, making up half of the eight-team field.
The Arkansas State women’s bowling team rank second in the nation and will hold on to that No. 2 spot entering the NCAA Championship. The Red Wolves are the highest ranked SBL team in the field after winning the league championship.
Vanderbilt will enter the championship as the No. 3 seed as the Commodores make their 11th consecutive appearance in the field.
Sam Houston earned the No. 4 seed in the 2016 tournament as this marks the squad’s fifth trip to the Elite Eight in the program’s six-year history. The Kats have now earned NCAA berths in four consecutive seasons including winning the 2014 national championship and reaching the semifinals in 2015.
Sam Houston stands as one of only three programs in the country with more than 90 dual match victories in 2015-16. The Bearkats own a record of 93 victories and only 43 losses. Sixty-eight of those wins have come over squads ranked among the top 25 and 34 victories were against top 10 national opponents.
The Bearkats have won two tournament championships and finished as runner-up in four events including last weekend’s Southland Bowling Conference tournament in Kenner, La. Sam Houston has finished among the top seven teams in all but one of their other tournament appearances.
Stephen F. Austin was announced as the No. 5 seed, two spots better than last season’s seven seed. The seeding comes off a solid season for the Ladyjacks as SFA posted an 81-41 (.664) record on the year and is ranked fifth in the latest NTCA coaches poll. The Ladyjacks have finished in the top-10 in each of this season’s 11 events, finishing among the top-five on eight occasions.
The Ladyjacks have gone head-to-head against each of the other seven qualifiers this season, posting a combined overall record of 20-26. SFA has recorded five wins each against McKendree (5-1) and North Carolina A&T (5-2) and has gone 4-7 against Nebraska, facing them a season-high 11 times in 2015-16.
The 2016 NCAA Championships will be hosted by Fairleigh Dickinson of the Northeast Conference, taking place at Brunswick Zone Carolier in North Brunswick, New Jersey. Pool play will get underway Thursday, April 14 and conclude Friday, April 15, leading into the double elimination bracket play Friday afternoon. The championship match will once again be televised on ESPNU at 5:30 p.m. CT on Saturday, April 16. Tickets can be purchased on
www.NCAA.com prior to the championship.
All eight berths in the NCAA Championship are at-large selections. Qualifying rounds will take place on Thursday with teams being seeded into the bracket based on their won-lost records from a round-robin schedule. Bracket play begins on Friday with a double-elimination best-of-seven-games Baker match format. In the Baker format, each of the five team members, in order, bowls a complete frame until a complete (10-frame) game is bowled. A Baker match tied at three and a half games apiece after seven games will be decided by a tiebreaker using the Modified Baker format.
2016 NCAA Bowling Championship Participants
1. Nebraska
2. Arkansas State
3. Vanderbilt
4. Sam Houston State
5. Stephen F. Austin
6. McKendree
7. Central Missouri
8. North Carolina A&T