University of Maryland Eastern Shore (UMES) Women's Bowling team had an up and down day during the qualifying round of the 2008 NCAA Women's Bowling Tournament and earned a seventh seed heading into tomorrow's opening round.
The Lady Hawks will face Vanderbilt in a rematch of last season's National Championship beginning tomorrow at 10:30 a.m. (ET) at Thunder Alley.
The tournament bracket has been set and it is a double elimination format. Half of the eight team field could be eliminated by 1:00 p.m. tomorrow as teams bowl round two tomorrow at 12:20 p.m. (ET).
"We aren't planning on being one of those teams," said Head Coach Sharon Brummell. "We are going to get some rest, refresh and start new tomorrow. We have to beat them sometime, so facing [Vanderbilt] early on will be a good test and one we will be ready for."
The tournament started with four team games. Although the teams were paired up, the matches were only to accumulate pin fall. After games one and two the Hawks were in third place with total pinfall of 954 and 902. The sport shot pattern began to migrate however and most teams stumbled from there on out and UMES was one of them. They tallied an 862 in game three and an 887 in game four. Their game four score was the worst of the field and they subsequently fell into last place.
Out of the 50 bowlers who saw action in the team games portion of qualifying, UMES had their highest finisher at 12th. Jessica Worsley posted solid games of 226 and 209 but her game two and four scores put her average at 192.50. Laura Zanrucha and Maria Rodriguez were 18th and 19th respectively with averages of 185.25 and 184. Zanrucha rolled a pair of 200 games with a 213 and 201 while Rodriguez posted a 201.
After a break for lunch, the tournament continued and UMES still struggled. They remained eighth after the first set of Baker games, posting a 723. Then the Hawks got hot. They posted a 763 in Baker set number two, the third highest score that frame.
They maintained the momentum with a 706 in the third set and then were paired up with Minnesota State University (MSU). They had trailed MSU, but posted a 791, the second highest set. That performance moved them up to fifth place. UMES was gunning for one more spot heading into the final set of Bakers. The final set was a placement round where one took on two, three took on four, five took on six and seven took on eight. That meant the Hawks would face MSU again.
While they had just topped them all four games to move into fifth, they would not be so fortunate in the last set of Baker games. UMES defeated MSU by one pin in game one and fell by one pin in game two.
Then Minnesota posted two big scores, they took back fifth and to drop UMES one more spot, Sacred Heart moved up a position to take sixth and the Hawks were seventh.
#3 Vanderbilt, who led virtually the entire qualifying round, matched-up with #1 Nebraska in that final round and were topped by the Huskers. Nebraska took the top spot and the Commodores fell to second.
The seventh seed is a familiar one to UMES as they qualified in that position in 2004 and 2005. They were fourth in 2006 and fifth last season when they made it all the way to the finals. They finished seventh overall the first three years of the event. Moving through the field however isn't impossible. In 2006 New Jersey City qualified eighth and finished fourth overall. That same Gothic Knight squad was third in 2004 when qualifying sixth.
"The teams here are so evenly matched," said Brummell. "You have eight of the top nine teams in the country, three of the last four champions and three of the last four runner-ups. This could be won by anybody and we feel that we can be that anybody to win the whole thing.”
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