April 20, 6:00 CT

Teams (starting event)
[1] Oklahoma (beam)
[4] Utah (vault)
[5] Florida (bars)
[8] Washington (floor)
[9] Cal (bye before floor)
[12] Kentucky (bye before bars)

Individuals
Morgan Lane, North Carolina – AA (rotating w/ Oklahoma)
Elizabeth Price, Stanford – AA (rotating w/ Utah)
Cami Drouin-Allaire, George Washington – AA (rotating w/ Florida)
Shani Remme, Boise State – AA (rotating w/ Washington)
Rae Balthazor, Illinois – AA (rotating w/ Cal)
Lexy Ramler, Minnesota – AA (rotating w/ Kentucky)
Denelle Pedrick, Central Michigan – FX (rotating w/ Oklahoma)
Shannon Hortman-Evans, BYU – UB (rotating w/ Utah)
Meaghan Sievers, Iowa State – VT (rotating w/ Cal)

As in the first semifinal, the second semifinal has a clear, built-in delineation between two sets of three teams. We have the ranking favorites, former champions, and famous programs in Oklahoma, Utah, and Florida, and then we have the upstart challengers in Washington, Cal, and Kentucky.

Before this year, the three bottom-ranked teams in this semifinal had reached NCAA/AIAW nationals a combined ten times (Washington eight times, Cal twice), and only twice in the current millennium (once each for Washington and Cal). As for the top three teams combined…well counting that took too long and I got bored.

Anyway, it’s around 100. So…it’s more.

Washington, Cal, and Kentucky are still newbies to this level of competition, each one looking for some way to make the Oklahoma jump—an upset in the semifinals to get into Super Six is exactly how you start to make that jump. The actual scores from this year are of course more relevant than the history of the programs, but the scores tell the same story. A 197.0 would be a fantastic performance in the semifinal for Washington, Cal, Kentucky and would constitute a miss for Oklahoma, Utah, or Florida, which is why they’ll enter as the favorites.

How the upset happens

Washington
Washington under-performed at regionals and ended up being fortunate in its draw that a 196.275 advanced out of Penn State since that score would have been eliminated from several other regional competitions. The scores from various regionals are not necessarily directly comparable—all of Washington’s vault scores were stuck in the 9.7s when some would have been 9.8s at drunker meets, those early beam scores looked disproportionately low—but it does serve as a warning sign that a repeat of that regionals performance will not come close advancing from this semifinal and would allow the top teams to have major mistakes and still qualify—or at least outscore Washington. Continue reading National Semifinal #2: The Preview →

April 20, 12:00 CT

Teams (starting event)
[2] LSU (beam)
[3] UCLA (vault)
[6] Alabama (bars)
[10] Arkansas (bye before floor)
[11] Nebraska (bye before bars)
[18] Georgia (floor)

Individuals
Brianna Brown, Michigan – AA (rotating w/ LSU)
Cairo Leonard-Baker, Arizona State – AA (rotating w/ UCLA)
Drew Watson, Auburn – AA (rotating w/ Alabama)
Lauren Bridgens, Penn State – AA (rotating w/ Arkansas)
Jovannah East, Bowling Green – AA (rotating w/ Nebraska)
Lynnzee Brown, Denver – AA (rotating w/ Georgia)
Samantha Cerio, Auburn – UB (rotating w/ UCLA)
Jamie Stone, Ohio State – VT (rotating w/ Arkansas)
Abby Milliet, Auburn – BB (rotating w/ Nebraska)

How the upset happens
Because that’s what we’re all here for. In this semifinal, we have a fairly clear separation in ranking and scoring potential with three favorites to advance to Super Six in LSU, UCLA, and Alabama, and three challengers in Arkansas, Nebraska, and Georgia.

But that’s boring. The whole point of the semifinal round is to see if anyone can knock out the favorites, otherwise we could just advance the top six right to the final. So, here’s what the bottom-three teams need to do to make it good.

Nebraska
For Nebraska, the path to the upset is more or less “do exactly what you did at regionals, and you’re in with a good shot.” Nebraska’s regional score ranks in the top three among the teams in this semifinal and reflected a performance well above the level of Nebraska’s #11 ranking. That’s what it will take for one of these bottom-three teams to advance. Other than waiting for meltdown-city to arrive for one of the big-girl teams (always possible, but you can’t assume it), making Super Six means performing way better than during the season, which is what Nebraska just did.

Maintaining that level is not a given. Taking the season as a whole, that regionals performance was an outlier, featuring a score (197.525) that’s four tenths higher than Nebraska’s previous high and outpaces the team’s RQS by a significant margin on every event. Proving that level is the new normal is still a major task. Continue reading National Semifinal #1: The Preview →