No. 1 Huskers Head to NCAA Championship

The NTCA top-ranked Nebraska women’s bowling team will compete at the 2015 National Collegiate Women’s Bowling Championship this Thursday through Saturday at Tropicana Lanes in St. Louis. The Huskers are seeking their fifth NCAA title since the NCAA began sponsoring bowling as a sport in 2004 (2004, 2005, 2009 and 2013). This will be the 12th consecutive appearance for NU in the tournament.

Other NCAA qualifiers include Fairleigh Dickinson, Arkansas State, Vanderbilt, Central Missouri, Sam Houston State, Stephen F. Austin and Wisconsin-Whitewater. Sam Houston State is the defending NCAA champion after topping the Huskers last April.

Nebraska Head Coach Bill Straub is eager for competition to begin on Thursday, as he mentioned the team has been really looking good at practice the past few weeks.

“Over the last two weeks, the team has been more interested in hard work and preparation than maybe any team we have ever had,” Straub said. “It doesn’t mean things are going to go well in St. Louis, but the preparation and effort has never been better.”

“The efforts are not trying to make good shots, but trying to eliminate the bad shots. If that can happen we should be ok.”

This year’s team looks a lot like the one that competed for the 2014 NCAA National Championship, but according to Straub, two newcomers may play a vital role for NU in its quest for their fifth NCAA title.

“We have two new people that have done extraordinarily well, true freshman Julia Bond and junior Melanie Crawford, a transfer from Stephen F. Austin have been competing at a very high level this season and our lefty from England, Beth Hedley has never in her life played better,” he said. “That is not counting how well Gazmine Mason is playing, or, as I predict the NCAA Player of the Year that gets announced (Wednesday night) Liz Kuhlkin, she has been having a terrific senior season and hopefully she will get rewarded for all those efforts.”

Speaking of Kuhlkin, the senior from Schenectady, N.Y., is one of the favorites to win the collegiate bowler of the year Wednesday night at the NCAA Championship Banquet. Straub believes that Kuhlkin’s senior season caps one of the best careers in Nebraska women’s bowling history.

“She certainly came in as a good player but after her freshman year—she kicked it into overdrive. The last three years she has been the best player in the country,” Straub said.

If Kuhlkin wins National Collegiate Bowler of the Year Wednesday, she would be the seventh Husker bower to capture the award and the first since Cassandra Leuthold in 2010.

According to Straub, a starting lineup has not been set for the tournament, but will be determined after the Huskers practice Wednesday afternoon.

“We are going to watch the practice session (Wednesday) and make our best guesses because not everybody throws it the same,” Straub said. “Thankfully, we have an eight-pack of people that can play successfully, it is just whether or not Coach Klempa and I can make the best decision on who mostly will play the best.”

Competition begins Thursday at 12:50 pm (central) with qualifying rounds in which each team bowls one five-person regular team game against each of the other seven teams participating in the championship for a total of seven matches.

The qualifying round will be split into two-days, with five matches on Thursday and then two on Friday, before the teams will be seeded for bracket play based on their win-loss record during the qualifying rounds.

Friday’s competition will be best-of-seven-games Baker matches in a double elimination tournament. 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 3½ games to 3½ games after seven games will be decided by a tiebreaker using the Modified Baker format.

The championship finals will air on ESPNU at 7 p.m. (central) on Saturday, April 11. A tape-delayed broadcast of the championship finals will air on ESPN at 3-5 p.m., on Sunday, April 12.

Kuhlkin Looks to Finish off Brilliant Career, Before Passing the Torch to Bond 

After this weekend’s NCAA Championship tournament in St. Louis, the Nebraska women’s bowling team will say goodbye to one of the programs most talented student-athletes in its history, senior Liz Kuhlkin.

Kuhlkin, a native of New York, is a two-time NTCA First Team All-American and in addition she captured MVP honors of the 2013 NCAA Championships, while also competing for the Junior U.S. National Team.

Despite the loss of a potential three-time first team all-American, NU looks to have found its next star to succeed Kuhlkin, in true freshman Julia Bond. The two mainstays in the Nebraska starting lineup during the 2015 season, Kuhlkin and Bond lead the Huskers in every statistical category.

Kuhlkin has compiled a total pinfall of 14,664 through 67 games, compiling a regular season pinfall average of 218.8. She was at her best at the Central Missouri Invitational, where she averaged a staggering 234.3 game average—the highest game average produced by any Husker during the season.

Even more impressive, Kuhlkin did not average below a 200 during any competition in her senior campaign.

As for Bond, a top-rated high school prospect out of Aurora, Ill., has had an immediate impact for the Huskers during her freshman campaign. She has compiled season game average of 204.3, with a total pinfall of 12,260 in 60 games, she ranks second on the team in both categories. She was at her best at the Mid-Winter Classic in Jonesboro, Ark., where she compiled a weekend average of 223.4, earning all-tournament honors.

Looking back at the 2014 NCAA Championships

After a roller-coaster season for the Nebraska bowling program, the Huskers nearly came away with their second straight national title, finishing as the NCAA runner-up in 2014.

In a season that included four-time NCAA champion coach Bill Straub on the sideline with an emergency medical issue, the Huskers overcame countless challenges and the nation’s toughest schedule to arrive back in the NCAA title match.

Nebraska traveled to the NCAA Women’s Bowling Championships in Cleveland, Ohio at the Wickliffe Bowling Center April 8-10. The Huskers struggled out of the gates at the NCAA’s, earning the sixth overall seed after the qualifying rounds. NU went just 2-5 during the round.

As the sixth overall seed, the Huskers had their work cut out for them as they entered into the elimination rounds. NU opened the competition with a nail-biter against Vanderbilt, as the Huskers beat the Commodores 4-3 in dramatic fashion. The Huskers went on to face off with NTCA No. 1 Arkansas State.

ASU was no match for NU, as the Huskers beat the Red Wolves 4.5-2.5 after a game four tie

In the NCAA semifinals, NU knocked off a talented Wisconsin-Whitewater squad, 4-2, to advance to the NCAA title game against Sam Houston State.

The Huskers started slow in game one, leaving two open frames in their first five attempts. Despite the two open frames, NU managed to keep the pressure on SHSU with six consecutive spares before falling in the first game, 181-166.

NU started to heat up in the second game, leaving just one open frame in the game. The Huskers rolled four strikes and six spares, beating the Bearkats, 187-182. Kuhlkin sealed the game with a spare and strike in her final two attempts.

Game three brought a back-and-forth battle between the Huskers and Bearkats. NU jumped out to the early lead, rolling five straight spares followed by two strikes before the 10th frame. Kuhlkin tallied a spare and a strike in the 10th, but the Huskers came up short, 193-190, to give the No. 8 seed Bearkats a 2-1 lead.

In another seesaw battle, Nebraska took the fourth game, beating SHSU, 197-189 to tie the match. The Huskers used four straight strikes starting in the seventh frame to beat the Bearkats, capped off by a Kuhlkin strike in the 10th frame.

The Bearkats opened up game five on fire, hitting four straight strikes. The Huskers were unable to overcome SHSU’s strong start, dropping the fifth game, 205-191.

The sixth game proved to be decisive, as Nebraska left three open frames to give SHSU an early lead. The Huskers managed back-to-back strikes in the fifth and sixth frames, but it wasn’t enough in a 195-165 loss.