Women’s Bowling advances to winners bracket final at SSAC Championships

SAVANNAH, Ga. (February 23, 2024) – The Milligan University women's bowling team advanced to the winners bracket final with victory over SCAD Atlanta in the opening day of the Southern States Athletic Conference (SSAC) Championships at Bowlero Savannah on Friday.

Seeding for the tournament was based on regular season RPI which designed Milligan the No. 2 seed in the six-team bracket. The tournament format in the winners bracket features a mini mega match that includes one traditional team game and four baker games. If the two teams split the team game and bakers, a best of five baker match will be played.

Third-seeded SCAD Atlanta won its first-round matchup over Stillman to meet the Buffs in the winners bracket semifinal.

"Going into our practice session today, we were executing well but really struggled to find a good line to the pocket," said head coach Brian Rickert. "However, the benefit of having a bye in the first round was good in that it allowed us some additional practice time to experiment with some surface changes and we were able to get locked in."

The Buffs had three players bowl over 200 in the team game as Milligan bested the Bees 1,044 pins to 927 to start the match. Allison Robbins was the top scorer at 235 pins, followed by Brianna Rickert (224) and Emily Cheesman (221).

"The ladies went their first six frames of the traditional game clean and would have shot even better but we made some substitutions in the 10th frame to see if we could keep some other ladies fresh," said Rickert. "If we can remotely stay in that kind of zone we will be tough to beat tomorrow"

In four baker games Milligan outscored SCAD Atlanta 758-696. The Buffs had the three highest baker games in the match at 215, 190 and 187.

Milligan squares off with top-seeded SCAD Savannah tomorrow in the winners bracket final. The 2023-24 SSAC champion will be crowned tomorrow.