Monthly Archives: January 2021

Rankings

Week 1 Rankings

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Full rankings

1. Florida Gators

Score: 197.500

Florida edged Oklahoma to take the top spot in the season’s first rankings, largely on the strength of a beam rotation that picked up right where it left off last season. Overall, Florida recorded ten scores in the 9.9s, compared to Oklahoma’s five. Ellie Lazzari made an encouraging debut with two scores in the 9.9s, and Trinity Thomas leads the national all-around standings with her opening 39.750.

2. Oklahoma Sooners

Score: 197.450

Oklahoma came up just shy of Florida but showed a complete and even first-meet performance with no counting score lower than 9.825. Freshman Katherine Levasseur led the entire team on bars with a 9.925, and Audrey Lynn—who never scored better than 9.650 on vault as a L10—upgraded to a handspring pike 1/2 to tie for the highest vault score with 9.875. Despite the second-place position, this week’s score is .150 higher than Oklahoma’s debut score from last season, which had the team in first place.

3. Utah Utes

Score: 196.900

Utah will comfortably accept a near-197 performance in the first meet, a showing that encountered a few minor bugs but also featured competitive debuts from Rucker and Stanhope, on vault and floor—though with downgraded vaults, so watch that space. Unsurprisingly, beam shone as Utah’s strongest event score, even with some shaky early-lineup routines.

4. Alabama Crimson Tide

Score: 196.850

Alabama will be among the teams most pleased with its first-meet performance, securely withstanding falls here and there to score competitively, and keeping pace on floor even with a half-missing lineup. Sophomore Mati Waligora stole the show in her debut with a Y1.5 and a 9.925 on beam, though Shania Adams also comported herself smoothly in an all-around debut, and Makarri Doggette was excellent in her two appearances. A rough performance from Emily Gaskins may jeopardize her lineup spots as more gymnasts add back events, so keep an eye on that.

5. LSU Tigers

Score: 196.550

LSU isn’t ranked poorly but won’t be particularly pleased with a first-meet performance that nearly saw the team fall to Arkansas. Shaky beam routines from some unexpected characters, as well as a generally rough day for Shchennikova, took LSU’s total down, and the team required some serious saving from Haleigh Bryant and Kiya Johnson on floor to get the win (their scores were too high, but even scored normally, those routines would have been enough for the win). The sublime three-event debut from Bryant will rank as the major highlight for LSU.

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Live Blog

Saturday Live Blog – January 9, 2021

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Saturday, January 9
 Scores Stream
9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT – Best of Utah ([4] Utah, [17] BYU, [23] Southern Utah, Utah State) LINK BYUTV

Let’s all travel to the land of beehives for today’s lone meet. Southern Utah starts on vault, Utah starts on bars (probably the event where I’m most interested in seeing the lineup) , BYU on beam, and Utah State on floor.

One thing I didn’t mention yesterday because there was so much going on is that the judging assignments haven’t been made public for any of the meets yet, and if college gymnastics thinks we’re going to be OK with that lack of transparency because of a pandemic, it has another thing coming. We need to know exactly who is giving out these terrible scores, especially because in one day we’ve already had clear, objective mistakes in both start value and deductions. Gymnasts have to put their names and faces on their mistakes, so judges should too.

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Live Blog

Friday Live Blog – January 8, 2021

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Friday, January 8
 Scores Stream
7:00pm ET/4:00pm PT – [16] Missouri @ [10] Georgia LINK SECN
8:00pm ET/5:00pm PT – [1] Florida @ [14] Auburn LINK SEC+
8:30pm ET/5:30pm PT – [15] Arkansas @ [3] LSU LINK SECN
9:00pm ET/6:00pm PT – [12] Kentucky @ [6] Alabama LINK ESPNU

It’s, er, um, er, happening. A season. Of gymnastics. Or at least a day. We’ll see how far we get.

Starting us off will be Georgia and Missouri going it alone for the first hour. Among the noteworthy developments in Georgia’s release of its tentative lineups yesterday was the absence of Rachael Lukacs, which is not ideal, and the absence of Victoria Nguyen on beam, also not ideal, and the absence of Soraya Hawthorne, also not ideal. So we’ll see how floor and vault go. Dudes, we were supposed to be worried about bars. Bars.

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NCAA Preview

NCAA Week 1 Preview

Full schedule and links

Marquee Meet

[16] Missouri @ [10] Georgia
Friday – 7:00pm ET – SEC Network

It was kind of difficult to choose a marquee meet for this opening weekend (you know, that very important classification) because, among the SEC slate, we have the four traditional powers—Florida, LSU, Georgia, Alabama—each in separate dual meets they’ll be expected to win. Elsewhere, Utah and Oklahoma will be major favorites in their competitions, so it’s quite possible we could have six straightforward and predictable results. And yet, it’s the first meet of a truly bonkers year and there are many unanswered questions, like who’s out with COVID. Or, I mean, who’s injured, or which freshmen are for real and which ones aren’t. Many, many reasons not to be confident about what we’ll end up seeing this weekend. But anyway, I went with the one where I’m most interested in seeing who ends up in these lineups.

In 2021, Georgia’s highest priority will be actually figuring out bars, so I’ll be hyper-focused on how that six shapes up during the first meet. Theoretically, things should get better, but the team will need to see freshmen like Victoria Nguyen come through with competition-ready routines, and Marissa Oakley maintain her health long enough to lead that lineup. Another season of cobbling together a lineup of people who’d rather not be doing bars will lead to Georgia fighting to stay in the top half of the SEC once again. Also Victoria Nguyen. College debut. A thing. Interesting. Watch.

Georgia’s released tentative lineups include Nguyen on everything but beam (I have 16 questions) and include Emily Schild on both bars and beam. That’s a potential boon for Georgia as her injury history had made me, shall we say, skeptical that we would see her again. I notice a disturbing lack of Rachael Lukacs in the lineups below.

Missouri will be without Helen Hu this season, which forces a lineup reshuffle. During the showcase about a month ago, Missouri showed just three scored vaults. There are several obvious vaulters on the roster who were not part of that three and I assume will be vaulting now, a month later, but how Missouri fills out a vault and bars lineup of six will be worth following. Kyra Burns is a potentially significant freshman who did not compete at that showcase and would be expected to make it into both lineups normally. Do expect to see at least a couple events from Jena Swanson and Amaya Marshall.

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