Monthly Archives: April 2017

NCAA Gymnastics Nationals

National Championship Preview Part 1: Western Semifinal

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By the magic of the draw (and by magic, I of course mean trash), the semifinals have been divided by conference and geography, with the eastern-ish teams from the SEC and Big Ten placed in the evening session and the western-ish teams from the Pac-12 and Big 12 placed in the afternoon session. It’s pretty racist.

We’re a little more than a week away from nationals now, so to begin preparing, here’s a preview of the race to qualify to Super Six from the first semifinal, the one that appears the more straightforward of the two but is certainly not open-and-shut.

April 14, 12:00 CT

Teams (starting event)
[1] Oklahoma (bye before floor)
[2] Utah (vault)
[3] UCLA (bye before bars)
[4] Oregon State (floor)
[5] Denver (beam)
[6] Washington (bars)

Individuals
Jessica Yamzon, Arkansas, AA (rotating w/ Utah)
Alexis Mattern, Ohio State, AA (rotating w/ UCLA)
Shani Remme, Boise State, AA (rotating w/ Washington)
Angel Metcalf, Iowa, AA (rotating w/ Denver)
Katie Becker, Auburn, AA (rotating w/ Oklahoma)
Haylee Young, Iowa State, AA (rotating w/ Oregon State)
Braie Speed, Arkansas, VT (rotating w/Oklahoma)
Samantha Cerio, Auburn, UB (rotating w/ Utah)
Clair Kaji, Iowa, BB (rotating w/ Utah)

Oklahoma
As much as a sure thing to qualify to Super Six exists, Oklahoma is it. Oklahoma’s score from regionals was nearly a point better than any other team in this semifinal and was .625 better than any other team in the country. The margin for error the top teams usually have heading into regionals is what Oklahoma has in the semifinal. Counting a fall would be fine, and that’s pretty rare for nationals.

My primary areas to watch at regionals were vault, where Oklahoma responded with basically-almost sticks from Dowell, Jackson, and Nichols for 49.575, and the Maggie Nichols AA, which she did and scored 39.750. So, I’d say both of those were a check mark. A dose of floor landings was the only knock on Oklahoma’s regionals performance, which would serve them very well if replicated at nationals. I’ll get into the title race in more detail in a later preview, but it would be quite the ridiculous shock if Oklahoma were not to advance to Super Six somehow. Continue reading National Championship Preview Part 1: Western Semifinal →

Uncategorized

Regionals Round-Up

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Since actually watching all the regionals and getting a sense of how they played out is aggressively impossible, here is a summary of the salient details regarding qualification and not-qualification for each of the six competitions on Hellscape Saturday in case you missed anything.

Florida Regional
Archived stream
What looked like it should have been a straightforward regional began way too interestingly for anyone’s blood pressure when Florida, ever the charitable cherubs, took pity on us and decided to get weird by opening bars with Alicia Boren going over on a handstand for 9.425 and Rachel Gowey falling on a Ray for 9.200. Ultimately, this didn’t matter in the slightest as Florida recovered for normal scores on floor and vault to win the regional and qualify to nationals by over a point.

Georgia used a near-season-high 49.325 vault score in the first rotation (featuring a 9.950 for Snead) to open a lead over Missouri that was never smaller than three-tenths throughout the entirety of the meet, undermining the potential SEC clash we had before us. Once Georgia was able to drop Lauren Johnson’s bars fall and get through a beam rotation featuring only one wobble-burger (wow!), Missouri had little hope of catching up. The absence of Rachel Dickson anywhere but bars remains a concern for Georgia heading toward nationals, however, as Beth Roberts replaced her on vault and floor with respectable-but-not-Super-Six 9.800s.

Missouri ultimately finished .675 behind Georgia and never came all that close to challenging, doing well to avoid counting any falls after misses from Tucker on bars and beam but never getting the necessary big scores in the 9.9 zone. The main trouble for Missouri was the unwelcome discovery that routines that had been scoring 9.850 at home during the regular season were suddenly scoring 9.775 and 9.800 here, making it difficult to squeak very far over the 49.0 plateau on any event. Continue reading Regionals Round-Up →

Live Blog

Regionals Live Blog

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The time is now. The day is here. People are finally going to be eliminated!

Saturday, April 1
 Scores Watch
4:00 ET/1:00 PT – West Virginia Regional LINK LINK
4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Florida Regional LINK SEC+
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – Arkansas Regional LINK SEC+
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – Illinois Regional LINK LINK – AA
LINK – VT
LINK – UB
LINK – BB
LINK – FX
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – Nebraska Regional LINK LINK
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Washington Regional LINK LINK

For more details, check out the Regionals HQ.

The first two regionals to begin are supposed to be the most straightforward of the day, with Florida and Georgia expected to advance and Alabama and Michigan expected to advance, so in the first hour, eyes will be on seeing if those teams avoid disaster and whether Missouri is putting up the kind of early numbers that may challenge Georgia. Continue reading Regionals Live Blog →

Elite Things

Jesolo Seniors Live Blog

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Today, the senior US team rumbles into Jesolo to international-experience up a storm against teams from Russia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, France, and Belgium.

Earlier in the day, all the US juniors scored 199 billion to run away with the competition. BUT NO ONE SAW IT COMING. Perea took the AA with 57.550, followed by O’Keefe with 57.300 and Malabuyo with 56.700. Those would have been really good junior scores in the last code, let alone this one.

The first half of rotation 1 has Italy on vault, France on bars, USA 1 on beam, and Russia on floor. The second half has Brazil on vault, Canada on bars, Mixed Group on beam, and USA 2 on floor. They’ll rotate from there.

Continue reading Jesolo Seniors Live Blog →