10 – Clemson v Iowa State @ Florida Play-in
The play-in meets (er, sorry, the firstroundoftheNCAAchampionship!!) will open the curtain on regional competition, and among these dual meets, Clemson/Iowa State sure is the one storylining up a storm. Clemson has advanced to the elimination meets in its very first season and goes up against an Iowa State team with a new head coach and its own type of fresh start, making it back to regionals after missing out last season.
Clemson will enter as the favorite given its superior ranking, superior average, and superior NQS on all four events, but the one thing we have seen plague Clemson lately is inconsistency at road competitions. Clemson has counted a fall at each of its last four road meets—three of those on beam. If you’re looking for places where Iowa State ranks ahead of Clemson, that would be recent beam scores and road beam scores. If Iowa State shows up as the more composed beam team, that’s the way in.
9 – Chloe Widner’s Beam v The World @ Cal Regional
We have several ripe event battles brewing at the various regional sites—which obviously means they will end up being the most boring ones—but the sheer depth of beam at the Cal regional makes this one stand out.
Even if everything goes by the seedings and top-scoring beamers like Hutchinson and Mabanta for Denver and the whole entire Cal lineup go through with their teams, you still have the likes of Selena Harris (also the favorite for AA qualification if UCLA doesn’t qualify a team), Emma Malabuyo, and Emily Lee for UCLA going up against Chloe Widner for Stanford, Emily White for Arizona State, Gabby McLaughlin and Cassie Stevens for Auburn, Skylar Killough-Wilhelm for Washington, Karina Muñoz for Iowa, and more among 18 top-50 ranked beamers appearing in this regional.
Widner versus UCLA alone would have been worth it, but this has so many more complicating factors, including…what happens with team qualification.
8 – Minnesota v Oregon State @ Arkansas Regional Semifinal
The draw was not super kind to Minnesota. As a seeded team, Minnesota would have already been thinking about the tremendous challenge of contending with LSU, Kentucky, and home Arkansas in a regional final, but now really can’t look past Oregon State in the semifinal.
These two teams were back and forth in that 15-16-17 zone most of the season, with Minnesota pulling away at the very end aided by a strong conference championship performance, while Oregon State got dropped out of the seedings by a last second counting beam fall at Pac-12s. And that could be a difference maker here. Oregon State has not scored better than 49.225 on beam at road meets, while Minnesota’s beam has been resurrected this year as it returned to being Minnesota’s strength, producing the team’s best event ranking at #8.
But in a hit meet for Oregon State, we should be looking at pretty even squads, both of which have turned last season’s problem events into their primary strength in this matchup. Minnesota will expect that beam edge, while Oregon State has transformed into a bars team and ranks much better than Minnesota there. The scores tell us that Minnesota should also have an edge on floor, but will Minnesota keep that up, or was it just because Jade didn’t do floor for half a season?
7 – NC State v Ohio State @ Michigan Regional Semifinal
Joining heavy favorites Oklahoma in their regional semifinal, NC State and Ohio State present the most even, coin toss, 50-50 prospect across the regional semifinals. Ohio State sat in a seeded position for almost the entire season but dropped right at the last moment to end up unseeded as NC State made a huge last-second surge. So it’s fitting that they should be fighting it out against each other to prove once and for all which team should own the honor of a spot in the final 16.
In many ways, this is the final “was any of it real?” test for NC State. NC State owns all three of the top scores between these two teams in 2024, including that ACC Championship-winning 197.550. Meanwhile, if you isolate the scores to only road meets, Ohio State flips the fight and has the major edge (scoring more than a fall better than NC State). NC State’s top score outside the state of North Carolina was 196.850, while Ohio State has four 197s when competing out of state. So which is real?
6 – Floor Stars v The Judges @ Arkansas Regional
In a season in which floor scores have soared, the Arkansas regional owns the title of most FX-score-stacked of them all, featuring 9 of the top 20 floor workers in the country—and that doesn’t even include Jade Carey, who is unranked on floor. The race to qualify as an individual for floor out of this regional will be intense.
The cleanest solution would see the #1 lineup from LSU and the Kentucky 9.975+ brigade of Brose and Worley go through as teams—which they are seeded to do—and Jade Carey go as the AAer from this regional, leaving national FX #2 Mya Hooten to qualify for floor. But things never go cleanly, and that also discounts an Arkansas lineup has been all over the 9.950s and 9.975s on floor at home this year with Jones, Williams, Smith, and Price.
Given what we’ve seen transpire on floor this year, this regional presents the potential for a ton of bunching up at the top 9.950-10 zone (16-way tie on 9.950 here we comeeeeee), so that it’s difficult to differentiate routines, which is trouble when you’re trying to isolate the one, single most deserving qualifier. And by the time LSU heads to floor in the last rotation of the last semifinal…will there be anywhere left to score?
5 – Arkansas v Kentucky @ Arkansas Regional Final
When we arrive at the Arkansas regional final, the rankings tell us to expect LSU, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Minnesota to reach this stage and that LSU and Kentucky will advance.
They certainly have the scoring advantage and are probably the clearest pair of team qualification favorites across any of the regionals. If I’m a top-8 team, this is the regional I wanted. But. Arkansas is competing at home—and, if the rankings stand, will have Olympic order in the regional final—which should be cause for everyone’s alarm.
When we isolate Arkansas’s home scores against Kentucky’s road scores, the two become more or less identical, with only a single .05 deduction separating their averages this year and Arkansas joining LSU as a top-2 team here on vault and floor. Arkansas’s last home result was a 198.100, and if that’s a real thing, it will be tough for the likes of Kentucky and Minnesota to match it.
4 – Bars 10s v Each Other @ Florida Regional
Really, you could point to any of the individual qualification contests at this Florida regional as the one, but bars has that special oomph of specialists coming from just all corners.
If Florida and Utah do indeed go through as teams, not only would you have an extremely accomplished Michigan State lineup led by Delanie Harkness and Nikki Smith looking out individual bars qualification, but you’d have Mara Titarsolej from Missouri with a 10 so far this season, Lily Smith from Georgia with a 10 so far this season, Lali Dekanoidze from North Carolina with all those 9.975s last year, and the highest-ranked of them all, Isabella Minervini from Towson, who has gotten herself up to a tie for #4 in the country and has been outscored by only Leanne Wong among the gymnasts in this regional. It’s a rough one.
But also, the all-around. Keep an eye on that one, where we could see Sienna Schreiber, Schyla Schulte, Lily Smith, Gabi Stephen, Syd Morris and others all in the mix for one spot.
3 – Alabama v Michigan @ Michigan Regional Final
It’s getting goooood. This regional is led by Oklahoma, which means Alabama and Michigan probably have the least realistic room to hope for a top-seed meltdown that provides them an extra avenue to nationals. It’s pretty much down to them. And while Michigan hasn’t had an…overly awesome year so far (that’s a way of saying it’s their first time finishing the regular season outside the top 10 in more than a decade), if they conduct normal business in the regional final at home, it should still come down to very small margins with Alabama.
Across the season, Alabama has enjoyed the edge everywhere but floor, which will be the potential opening for Michigan. Alabama’s road floor peaked at 49.550 this season, while three of Michigan’s four home floor scores were over 49.7. The opportunity to pick up tenths in the last rotation should be there, especially if Morrison is able to return to this lineup as well. But the meet has to be close enough for a few tenths to matter, and as we’ve seen Michigan have to dig into the backup-depth barrel on other events, Alabama has emerged as the more likely to get a score on most pieces, especially beam lately. Michigan would have to keep that beam margin down so that floor can make the difference.
2 – The Seeds v Pressure @ Florida Regional Final
Here’s the thing. Florida is the #1 seed, finished 2nd nationally each of the last two years and is hosting this meet. Utah is the #2 seed and has literally never not advanced to nationals or finished outside the top 10 in the entire history of the sport. They have the edge. The scores tell us that Florida and Utah will go through and that Michigan State and Missouri are simply great teams that got shoved into the worst draw of them all, and them’s the breaks.
But boy is Michigan State a compelling upset prospect that at any particular meet has the gymnasts to stay with both Florida and Utah—and winning Big Tens with a 197.600 only adds to the juiciness of the prospect. By comparison, Florida went just 197.300 at its own conference championship where Missouri also went 197.275 out of the afternoon session, which should also give Missouri some confidence heading into this one.
Michigan State ranks better than Utah on vault. Missouri ranks better than Florida on floor. The advantages, the openings, they are not hard to find. You don’t have to sift through to the beam road scores on a Saturday when it’s cloudy to find a case. Florida and Utah should expect exactly no margin to be even a little bit bad in this one.
1 – UCLA v The First 10 Weeks of the Season @ Cal Regional Final
The Cal regional final sets up as the toughest one by ranking, featuring 3 of the top 9 teams in the country and a #3-seed UCLA team that is aggressively trying to play the “SURPRISE we were actually good this whole time” game.
The entirety of the season tells us that Cal should be in the clear, leading this regional field on every single apparatus (just like Oklahoma and LSU at their regionals) and also competing at home. The only complicating factor is that conference championship performance, which scored well below what UCLA and Denver did that day. If that Cal team shows up again, it could be a problem—and Denver and UCLA are both easily strong enough to punish a counting mistake—but Cal should still be considered the favorite to move through here despite getting a more challenging regional draw than Oklahoma and LSU did.
Whether qualification is a clear-cut prospect for Denver will largely hinge on what manner of UCLA team ends up appearing at this regional—the one from most of the season or the one from the last two weeks? UCLA has by far the biggest home-road disparity of any team in the top 10, and when you take Cal’s home scores and Denver and UCLA and Auburn’s road scores, this regional is Cal and Denver easy-peasy all the way. Now, UCLA would argue that’s less about egregious home cooking or inability to hit on the road and more about lineup availability. With Malabuyo in the country, with Campbell and Frazier able to do floor, this is a different team with much higher scoring potential that matches Denver all the way and then wins it on floor.
And to that Denver would respond that UCLA had its ideal lineups back intact at Pac-12s and Denver’s conference championship score was still better.