BATON ROUGE, La. -- After earning a No. 14 seed in qualifying, the University of Pikeville men's bowling team lost 4-0 to defending champion and third-seeded McKendree (Ill.) in the first round of the Intercollegiate Team Championship on Thursday at the Raising Cane's River Center.

UPIKE now faces the tough task of battling back into championship contention from the Contender's Bracket. First up is a match with No. 11 Lawrence Tech (Mich.) at 8:45 a.m. ET in the double-elimination ITC.

The Bears will have to win five straight matches to make it to Saturday's finals. If they need to look for inspiration, they could find it in defeat as McKendree used the same path to win a national title last year.

On Thursday, McKendree stole the first game in the best-of-7 series 166-161 before winning 208-163 in game two. Game three was closer than the first at 190-188 before finishing off the sweep with a 179-136 win in game four.

At the start of the day in qualifying, UPIKE collected a total pin fall of 4,370 through 24 games of Baker play to finish 14th out of 16.

-UPIKE-