See Part 1

SEC Championship

Afternoon: Alabama, Auburn, Missouri, Arkansas
Evening: LSU, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky

The LSU v. Florida show in the evening session of the SEC Championship is the headlining clash across all the conference championships, with neither the #3 team nor the #4 team in the country truly claiming favored status. You know. Because 3 and 4. Early in the season, the SEC title looked to be Florida’s to run away with, Florida as the deeper team with more solidified lineups of 9.9s compared to an LSU team that lost starring routines from last season, had to develop some backups on several events, and suffered multiple conference losses, including to Florida at home. Recent scores, however, have leveled the picture, even allowing LSU to jump ahead of Florida in the rankings this past weekend.

Where I see this thing hinging more than anything else is in the vault landings. Florida’s nemesis this season has been controlling those 1.5s, which has allowed LSU to develop a comparative advantage as it built four reliable 10.0 starts into its own lineup—plus a full from Finnegan that gets overlooked because it doesn’t have the difficulty but provides a solid .075-.10 advantage over fulls from Florida depending on the day. Florida ends this competition on vault, and hopping forward on Y1.5s for 9.825 while LSU is simultaneously on floor is a recipe for losing. Even Trinity Thomas probably can’t expect to hop into the gulf on her 1.5 and still get 9.900 at SECs. Florida is going to need to stick a couple, and keep those hops at .05 size on the rest.

That last rotation will be a thrilling (potentially triggering) comparison because even though floor is floor, LSU’s floor isn’t necessarily the on-lock scoring machine it was in previous seasons. It seems that Edney has worked out her early season landing troubles, but we still don’t really know who the sixth member of the lineup will be (Campbell, Dean…Priessman? [cross yourself]), and there’s some roll-the-dice landing control issues for people like Desiderio early on. That’s why Florida has developed a tenth of an advantage over LSU in floor NQS, an advantage Florida will expect to come through in this meet.

It’s also why those troublesome vault landings are so important for Florida. Because the other events are there. Florida has what should be the more complete lineups on bars and beam, particularly through the middle where LSU has a couple routines they’re hoping to get through for 9.850 without too many form deductions being noticed before getting to the 9.950 sisters at the end, while Florida will view anything lower than 9.9 for any routine in those lineups as an off performance. Continue reading Conference Championships Preview – Part 2 →

Behold! The part that sort of matters before the part that really matters!

That’s right, the conference championships are upon us once again, our first tentative toe dipped into the waters of the championship season, with trophies on the line and four-judge panels back to try to weed out the most erratic of Carols, but without losers getting eliminated just yet.

With a dozen separate college championships being contested this weekend, I’ve split the preview up into two parts. Let’s begin with Part 1: Some of them! (The theme of part 2 will also be some of them.)

Pac-12 Championship

Afternoon: Washington, Arizona State, Stanford, Arizona
Evening: UCLA, Utah, Oregon State, Cal

The typical dynamic of the Pac-12 Championship is skewed to some degree this year. Rather than the usual “Utah or UCLA? Where she stops nobody knows!” outlook, we have a true favorite for the Pac-12 title this season in UCLA. The Bruins outrank the Utes on three of the four events, defeated Utah (in Utah) at their dual meet this season, and lead by more than a fall in NQS. Now, I don’t think UCLA can actually count a fall and still win this meet in real life, but that’s what the rankings tell us.

UCLA’s biggest asset compared to Utah will come on beam, where UCLA has the potential to put together a lineup that begins in the 9.9s and stays there, while Utah is more likely to remain in the 9.8s for most of the lineup apart from the bookends. Add that to the Flatley-Kocian-Ross trio on bars, and what at this point is just an auto-10 from Ohashi on floor, and UCLA will have several areas in which to build up the scoring advantage against Utah.

The concern for UCLA is if the performance at Vallapalooza was more than just an emotional one-off, because that performance was not good enough to win Pac-12s. In the meet against Utah State, we saw how reliant UCLA has become on Ross hitting vault because once she missed, suddenly some uncontrolled landings on other Y1.5s had to count, and UCLA barely broke 49. That’s not going to cut it compared to a Utah team that has the more reliable landings on its big-difficulty vaults from Skinner and MMG.

What Utah has been able to create this season is four lineups that should start from 9.850 and go from there. When Lee sticks, when Roberts does her usual cleanest routine in the lineup work on floor (fight me), they’re establishing a pretty high baseline. That’s a main reason we haven’t seen Utah fall below 197 this season, because the lineups are almost never fighting against that lead-off 9.775. There’s always something very usable to count. It’s still going to make Utah vulnerable to a team with lineups that start at 9.900 like UCLA can put up on a few events, but it’s also why Utah shouldn’t have much trouble finishing top 2 here with a hit meet. Continue reading Conference Championships Preview – Part 1 →