Bowlers finish as runner-up at Hawk Classic
2/28/2016 6:26:00 PM | Women's Bowling
After a pair of hard-fought, seven-game baker bracket contests against two top ranked teams, No. 4 ranked Sam Houston earned its fifth top two tournament finish of the season at the Hawk Flight Classic in North Brunswick, New Jersey Sunday.
The Bearkats fought back from 3-2 down twice in bracket play to defeat No. 14 LIU-Brooklyn in the semifinals and play No. 3 Vanderbilt dead-even 216 to 216 in the seventh game of the finals. Vandy won the tiebreaker 129 to 115 to finish the event 11-1. Sam Houston came home with a runner-up trophy after compiling a 9-3 mark in the Hawk Classic.
LIU-Brooklyn placed third with an 8-4 mark, No. 16 Monmouth and No. 9 Fairleigh Dickinson tied for fourth place with identical 7-5 marks.
“It was a tough crazy day but we fought our way through and battled until the end,” Sam Houston head coach Brad Hagen said. “The team showed a lot of heart and resiliency this weekend and did exactly what we needed to do to make this trip worthwhile. We got our money's worth this weekend.”
Sam Houston started the day with a 1,112 to 1,011 loss to Vanderbilt in the final traditional team match of the weekend. Then the Kats topped LIU-Brooklyn 211 – 267, 227 – 193, 194 – 181, 216 – 244, 150 – 226, 207 – 205, 187 -877 in the semifinals.
The final game scores of the championship match versus Vanderbilt were 258 – 237, 203 – 236, 266 -204, 180 – 216, 192 – 232, 236 – 216, 216 – 216.
The tournament performance in New Brunswick up Sam Houston's season record to 83 victories and only 37 losses.
In the program's sixth year, the Bearkats already have totaled 522 dual match victories, making Sam Houston one of the fastest true NCAA Division I start-up programs to reach the 500 plateau.
Randi Speiler placed third in the individual standings in traditional team play with a 219.0 average that included a record 289 game Saturday.
The Bearkats set a baker team single match record of 1,147 and then broke that mark with a 1,180 total during a 4-0 performance on opening day.
Sam Houston has two more regular season tournament remaining. The Bearkats travel to Smyra, Tennessee, March 18-20 for the Music City Classic and New Orleans, La., March 25-26 for the Southland Bowling Conference championship tournament.
The NCAA Championships will be held April 14-16 in North Brunswick, New Jersey.
