DALLAS, TX– Vanderbilt lost its golden touch that had accumulated a nearly 800 pin lead and lost the Lady Techster championship in a 4-1 best-of-seven baker defeat to Sam Houston State Sunday afternoon. As a result, it had to settle for the runner-up spot to the inspired Bearkats.
The Commodores seemed to own the USA Lanes over the first two days of play, but it was evident in Sunday’s early rounds that they didn’t have the spark they showed in prior days.
Where the Vandy lineup showed strength in every corner the first two days, Sunday’s play seemed to find a new sputter with each match. Yesterday’s strikes turned into spares, splits and missed-makeables.
“We came today with unfortunately a different mentality,” head coach John Williamson said. “We didn’t attack it like we had the first two days; we had some lulls and we just couldn’t shake ourselves out of them.”
Mabel Cummins, Amanda Naujokas and Caroline Thesier were named to the all-tournament team with Cummins placing first overall.
Vanderbilt finished the four team games on its round-robin with four wins to start the day, defeating St. Anselm, Louisiana Tech, Adelphi and Grambling. But its opening 906 was a harbinger of the grind to come and Vandy could only top the 1,000 pin mark once, contrasted to Saturday when its lowest total was 998 and once topped 1,100.
The Commodores went with a rotation of Naujokas, Alyssa Ballard, Thesier, Victoria Varano and Cummins to begin. Paige Peters entered for Varano in the second match and contributed games of 205-210-191. Cummins tallied a closing 236 for the Dores’ best game of the day; Saturday they had five games higher than that.
The championship match got off to a sour start with three opens in the first four frames and while Vandy bounced back to take Game 2, it never felt close as the Kats were riding the momentum. Vandy changed its rotation order midway through in hopes of shaking things up but to no avail.
Vanderbilt is now off for two week before heading to North Carolina A & T’s Stallings Invitational in Greensboro.