QUALIFYING I MEN'S BRACKET I WOMEN'S BRACKET

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Spectators who came out to Kingpin Lanes in the Greater Louisville area on Friday to watch the final rounds of match play at the 2024 Intercollegiate Team Championships were treated to more than 12 hours of heart-stopping action with several matches coming down to the final shot.

When the dust settled, just two men’s teams and two women’s remained, and those squads will be the ones battling it out for national titles on Saturday.

On the women’s side, Jacksonville State, which is less than a week removed from its victory at the NCAA’s 2024 National Collegiate Women’s Bowling Championship, will take on 2021 ITC champ and perennial powerhouse Wichita State, which will be seeking to extend its own record by claiming its 11th ITC national title.

The men’s title bout will pit Webber International against Lawrence Tech. Webber will be seeking its third ITC crown – the Warriors brought home titles in 2012 and 2019 – while Lawrence Tech will be trying to secure the first national title in program history.

The finals, which will be taped Saturday, will air on CBS Sports Network on Tuesdays in May. The women’s ITC show is scheduled to air on May 7 with the men’s ITC final slated to follow on May 14.

The title matches will be best-of-five Baker matches.

Although Webber International and Lawrence Tech both wound up in the men’s final, their paths to get there couldn’t have been more different.

Lawrence Tech got there by posting a perfect 4-0 record during two days of bracket match play at Kingpin Lanes, collecting wins over McKendree (4-0) and Marian-Indiana (4-2) on Thursday before taking down 2022 ITC men’s champion Wisconsin-Whitewater by scores of 4-1 and 4-3 on Friday to finish as the only undefeated team on their side of the bracket. 

Webber International’s route wasn’t quite as direct.

After leading the men’s field by nearly 200 pins on Thursday to earn the top seed for match play, the Warriors were promptly shut out 4-0 during their opening-round match against No. 16 Muskingum.

That dropped Webber into the Elimination Bracket at the earliest possible point in the tournament, meaning that just one more slipup would end the Warriors’ season.

But when Webber returned to the lanes Friday morning, instead of squinting to see the top of the steep mountain it would have to climb, the Warriors simply focused on climbing one step at a time.

The first one came in the form of a 4-2 victory over Midland. The next was a win over Mount Mercy by that same margin (4-2).

Gaining momentum, the Warriors then eliminated Pikeville (4-1) to earn a Round 6 rematch with Muskingum.

Webber flipped the script during that battle, shutting the Fighting Muskies out 4-0 to emerge as the lone survivor in the Elimination Bracket on that half of the men’s draw. 

And what was the Warriors’ reward for authoring such a stellar run? It was a matchup with defending national champion Wichita State, which it would have to beat twice.

That’s because, at that point, the Shockers were still undefeated after having beaten St. Ambrose (4-0) and Mount Mercy (4-1) on Thursday before soundly defeating Muskingum (4-0) during their first match on Friday.

The Round 7 matchup between the two men’s powerhouses certainly lived up to its billing with the teams splitting the first four games 2-2.

Nevertheless, when Wichita State won Game 5, 185-176, to go up 3-2, Webber International once again found itself on the brink of elimination.

That didn’t seem to bother the Warriors though because instead of cowering, they came out swinging, starting Game 6 with 10 strikes in a row before a stubborn 9-pin ended their bid for the tournament’s first 300 game.

Nevertheless, Webber emerged with a 289-214 victory to even the match and force a seventh and deciding game.

Although the Warriors didn’t challenge perfection during Game 7, they still managed to do plenty of striking, firing a sizzling 266 to easily best the 177 put up by Wichita State.

That victory gave Webber international the match, which meant that the two teams would take a short break before jumping into another best-of-seven battle to see who would earn the right to meet Lawrence Tech for the title on Saturday.

The Wichita State faithful were hoping that the rematch would bring about a different outcome, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

Instead, the Warriors stayed one step ahead of the Shockers from start to finish this time around, winning by scores of 232-204, 224-190, 249-193 and 236-223 to complete the sweep, eliminate the defending champions and earn a spot in the national championship match after completing one of the most improbable Elimination Bracket runs in ITC history.

After her team’s final match on Friday, Webber International Associate Head Coach Sydney Brummett reflected on the Warriors’ long and challenging run to the TV finals.

“We actually never thought about the fact that if we lost, we’re out; that was never a conversation, and we never talked about ‘what happens if,’” Brummett said. “We just discussed what we were going to do on the next shot. It was never the next game; it was the next shot. Who is the next person bowling, and how do we make sure he’s good?”

That simple approach led to amazing results as Webber was good all day long, and now the Warriors sit just one win away from capturing the third men’s national title in program history.

When asked how she felt about that, Brummett wasn’t quite sure how to answer.

“That’s a hard question for me because my job as a coach is to see the end product while we’re making it,” Brummett said. “As we recruited for this year and prepared the team, this is what I’ve thought about all along. When I make their practice plan in the morning, it says on there that we’re going to be the 2024 national champions on April 20, 2024; that’s what it says, and they literally sign in that way every single day. So, to me, this almost feels right, like this is what is supposed to happen, but as a coach, that’s my job.”

But Lawrence Tech Head Coach John Putti has a feeling about his team as well, and his feeling is that maybe this is the year that his team takes the next step and firmly establishes itself on the national stage.

“You always hear about teams like Wichita and Webber, and we’ve wanted to be a program that’s known like them,” Putti said. “But we’ve been a solid program for the last seven years that I’ve been here, and we’ve probably been in the top five for the last four or five years. 

“This season, we’ve talked all along about trying to make it something special. We won the Hoosier Classic, which is probably the most competitive tournament of the year, and that really jumpstarted our season. We won the NAIA championship last year, so the ITC is the only championship our program hasn’t won. If we do this, then this team will have accomplished just about everything.”

If you want to find two teams that have already accomplished just about everything, you needn’t look any further than Saturday’s two ITC women’s finalists, Jacksonville State and Wichita State.

Despite being in its first year of existence as a program, Jacksonville State has already experienced more success than most teams have in decades.

As mentioned earlier, the Gamecocks have already won a national title this season as they defeated Arkansas State 4-3 in Baker action on April 13 to capture the 2024 National Collegiate Women’s Bowling Championship.

They also finished the regular season at or near the top of just about every meaningful statistical category in the National Tenpin Coaches Association rankings, which seek to identify the strongest NCAA bowing programs in the country.

Therefore, the capacity crowd at Kingpin Lanes probably wasn’t surprised to see Jacksonville State go 4-0 on Thursday and Friday to clinch a berth in the 2024 ITC women’s championship match.

The Gamecocks began their march to the finals on Thursday by downing Saint Xavier (4-1) and Louisiana Tech (4-2). Then, on Friday, they managed to grind out two 4-3 victories over Mount Mercy to remain undefeated and earn a shot at their second national title in seven days.

Although Jacksonville State Head Coach Shannon O’Keefe has led teams to championships before, including last year when she coached McKendree to its second ITC women’s title, it was difficult for her to come to grips with how it feels for her team to be on the brink of history yet again.

“This is kind of overwhelming to be honest. It feels like a dream, like it isn’t real,” O’Keefe said. “We’ve had a historic season because everything we did was a first for our program, but we haven’t even really gotten to celebrate yet because we came home, washed our clothes and then got on a bus and came up here to bowl again.

“We know that we’re asking our girls to do the impossible because we’re even tired as coaches. But this has been a resilient group all year, so we’re just asking them to refocus for a few more days, and then hopefully we’ll be able to go on this giant celebration spree.”

Nevertheless, that won’t happen unless the Gamecocks can get past Wichita State, a program that knows a bit about celebrating national titles itself after having hoisted the ITC trophy in women’s competition a record 10 times.

And like Jacksonville State, Wichita State didn’t just sneak into Saturday’s title match; the Shockers were dominant while blazing their way into the finals.

They began match play with wins over Duquesne (4-2) and Sacred Heart (4-0) on Thursday. Then, when it was time to get back to work on Friday, Wichita State stayed just as strong, defeating Savannah College of Art and Design-Savannah by scores of 4-0 and 4-2 to finish match play with a perfect 4-0 record and put itself in prime position to break its own record with ITC title No. 11.

But Wichita State Head Coach Holly Harris isn’t looking forward to Saturday’s championship match because of what it could wind up meaning to the Shocker program and its legacy; she’s just happy for this specific group of players.

“This group is really special, and what they’ve done during the second semester is pretty awesome,” Harris said. “To put ourselves in position to win is all that you can ask for, and they’ve done that, which is fun and exciting.”

Harris knows that Jacksonville State will be more than a worthy opponent; nevertheless, she and her team aren’t cooking up any sort of special game plan for the championship match. They’re just going to stick with what works.

“We’ve spent a lot of time reminding the girls that they’ve practiced for so many hours, thrown so many shots over their target and made so many spares,” Harris said. “We’ve just told them to remember who they are and what they’ve done. We can’t really control what happens outside of us, so we just need to remember who we are and be ourselves. If we can do that, things are going to go our way.”

The 2024 ITC kicked off Thursday with a 24-game Baker block determining seeding for the bracket for the top 16 men’s and 16 women’s teams in the country. The opening rounds of match play took place Thursday with all teams returning to Kingpin Lanes on Friday. 

Teams qualified for the ITC through four sectional qualifiers held throughout the country in March. Teams had to place in the top four in their respective sectionals to advance.

For more information on the Intercollegiate Team Championships, visit BOWL.com/ITC.