Tulane University will host the 2026 Conference USA Bowling Championship at Colonial Lanes in Harahan, Louisiana, beginning March 17. The Tulane Green Wave, ranked No. 17 nationally, enters the tournament as the 11th seed and is set to face Vanderbilt, which holds both the No. 2 national ranking and seed.
The championship uses a double-elimination bracket with seeding based on NCAA RPI rankings. Jacksonville State is the top seed, followed by Vanderbilt, Arkansas State, Nebraska, and Louisiana Tech rounding out the top five. The event features a mega-match format that includes three rounds: a traditional match, a Baker total pinfall round of five games, and if necessary, a best-of-seven Baker match to determine the winner if teams split the first two rounds.
Competition begins with round one on Tuesday afternoon at 1:00 p.m., followed by additional rounds on Thursday through Saturday at scheduled times. The championship final will take place Sunday morning at 8:30 a.m., with an additional title match possible under the double-elimination rules. Live results will be available online throughout the week and ESPN+ will stream all matches. Admission to Colonial Lanes for this event is free.
Tulane remains ranked No. 17 in the latest NTCA coaches poll released yesterday and recently qualified for next month’s USBC Intercollegiate Team Championship after placing fourth in sectional play last weekend in Fort Worth. Sarah Rubi was named to the CUSA All-Academic Team last Friday—the first Tulane bowler to receive this honor since joining Conference USA for its inaugural bowling season in 2023-24. Rubi graduated from Lincoln Memorial with a bachelor’s degree in computer science before transferring to Tulane for her master’s studies and currently maintains a GPA of 3.890.
Team leader Mia Stolakis ranks 19th nationally with a player composite performance index of nearly 89 percent and leads Tulane with 415 strikes this season; teammates Rubi and Valeria Colon have also surpassed 250 strikes each. The winner of this week’s championship earns an automatic berth into April’s NCAA National Collegiate Championship regional competition in Parma Heights, Ohio, while Tulane also looks ahead to competing for the USBC ITC title later in Green Bay.
