HARAHAN, La. – The Jacksonville State bowling team got a pair of sweeps on the first day of the Inaugural Conference USA Championship on Friday, advancing to Saturday's winner's bracket final.
 
The top-ranked and top-seeded Gamecocks (95-23) got a pair of 2-0 wins, first over No. 8 seed and 13^th-ranked Tulane and then over fourth-seeded and fourth-ranked Vanderbilt. The wins push Jax State into a matchup with second-ranked Arkansas State on Saturday that will send the winner into Sunday's championship match of the double-elimination tournament without a blemish during the weekend. 
 
"Today was awesome," head coach Shannon O'Keefe said. "We knew that the matches were going to be tough, and we had talked about our overall intensity, our focus and how we needed to just stay patient in these really, really long matches." 
 
After a convincing win over Tulane in the morning round, the Gamecocks were tested often against the defending national champion Commodores. Jax State answered each of those tests and turned the day into a big success.
 
"You could most certainly tell that shot making was starting to slip just a little bit when we started rushing, so we just continued to remind them to stay patient," O'Keefe added. "They leaned into that and they bowled great today."
 
Jax State 2, Vanderbilt 0
The traditional portion of the match got of to a slow start for Jax State, thanks to a few open frames that allowed Vanderbilt to open an early lead. The Gamecocks leaned on that mantra and closed in impressive fashion to win the first point of the match with a 1,075-976 edge.
 
In the traditional games, graduate senior Rebecca Hagerman bowled a 246 to lead four Jax State scores over 200 and the other just one pin away. Senior Isabel Allen's 218 and graduate senior Crystal Elliott's 212 were key, as were graduate senior Maranda Pattison's 300 and graduate senior Kayla Smith's 199.
 
The same thing happened in Baker play, but the Gamecocks found a way to make every game push them toward earning the win. They rallied to tie the Commodores, 223-223 in the first game and then pulled ahead by 47 pins with a 224-177 win in the second game.
 
Vanderbilt won the third game, but it was a late charge by Jax State that turned a lopsided score early into a 232-213 score that left the Gamecocks in front. They never let up from that point, extending the lead with a 234-211 difference in game four and put the match away with a 215-190 win in the fifth game.
 
"I think that the part that is so fun with this group is that they are so resilient," O'Keefe said. "They have a short-term memory, and I think, in our sport, that's what it takes to be great. You have to gather the data from the not-good ones and have a short-term memory so that they can get right back to work and execute. They are very good at that."
 
The Gamecocks now turn their focus to Saturday's match against the Wolves, but O'Keefe emphasized that the Gamecocks need to just keep their focus on themselves.
 
"We are going to need to stay patient, kind of like today. We need to focus on ourselves, not focus on them and just fill frames."
 
Jax State 2, Tulane 0
In the morning match against Tulane, the top-ranked and top-seeded Gamecocks opened their first conference tournament with a sweep of eighth seeded and 13^th-ranked Tulane to advance to face No. 4 Vanderbilt in Friday afternoon's quarterfinal round.
 
Jax State got the match started with a 1,023-934 traditional win over the Green Wave to take the 1-0 lead and then finished them off with a 1,079-1,010 win in Baker play. 
 
Graduate senior Kayla Smith led her team with a 227 in traditional play, just ahead of fellow graduate senior Crystal Elliott's 223.
 
Graduate senior Rebecca Hagerman added a 202 and senior Isabel Allen a 201 for the Gamecocks, while graduate senior Maranda Pattison's 170 rounded out their total and pushed them past the Green Wave.
 
The Gamecocks got off to a good start in Baker play, building an 87-pin lead from the start with a 268-181 score in game one. The lineup of Smith, Allen, Pattison, Hagerman and Elliott sandwiched eight strikes between spares in the first and 10^th frames to build the early lead.
 
Tulane got a few pins back in the second game by outscoring Jax State 190-184, but the Gamecocks made their move in game three with a 235-200 win that gave them a 116-pin lead with two to play.
 
The Green Wave made it interesting after four, using a 226-177 win to pull to withing 67 pins, but the Gamecocks held them off with a 215-213 win in the fifth game.
 
All of the Gamecocks' matches in the CUSA Tournament will be streamed on ESPN+.