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Category Archives: 2023 NCAA Preview
2023 Auburn Tigers
[wptb id=95691]
Ranking History
2022 – 4th
2021 – 35th
2020 – 17th
2019 – 16th
2018 – 14th
2017 – 15th
2016 – 11th
2015 – 6th
2014 – 20th
2013 – 13th
2012 – 15th
Where 2022 Finished…
The 2022 season ranks as Auburn’s best finish of all time, outpacing the 5th-place result from back in 1993, so that’s…you know…good. I suppose it went pretty well. This was just the fourth time in history that Auburn finished a season ranked in the top 10, joining 1991, 1993, and 2015. The lion’s share of the credit for that result will go a little someone named Suni Lee, who spurred an exponential increase in notoriety, routine difficulty, and routine quality for Auburn. Certainly, the 4th-place finish would never have happened without her, but it’s also worth noting the degree of team effort present in Auburn’s historic season. Removing Lee’s NQSs, Auburn would still have ranked in the top 10 in 2022, which also would have been one of the best seasons in team history.
Gains and Losses
| LOST | GAINED |
| Drew Watson – VT, FX, (UB) | Olivia Greaves |
| Tara Walsh – (VT) | Hannah Hagle |
| Jada Glenn – (VT) | Hailey John |
| Payton Smith | |
The New Ones
Auburn will expect fairly minimal changes to the lineups in 2023 with a small first-year class that got even smaller when Olivia Greaves was ruled out for the season with an ACL setback. Greaves would otherwise have been expected to factor significantly in the bars and beam lineups this year (and of course would have the gymnastics to be an all-arounder, but we’ll see how things go with vault and floor after all this ACLing).
Hannah Hagle has been a strong AA finisher at States and Regionals in L10 since she dropped back from elite and should be the type who provides an option on any event depending on the needs of the team and how many lineup spots actually open up, especially considering all the locks returning from last season. Hagle was an early-lineup performer on all four at Auburn’s preview meet.
Auburn will also have Hailey John this season, one who has been out with injury for a good long time (her last L10 championship season was pre-pandemic) but had some real beam chops, as well as some inbar work, as a little.
Event by Event
VAULT
2022 Event Ranking: 5
| Lineup locks: Derrian Gobourne, Suni Lee, Sara Hubbard, Cassie Stevens |
| Lineup options: Olivia Hollingsworth, Sophia Groth, Hannah Hagle, Gabby McLaughlin, Adeline Sabados |
In the position of honor in the vault lineup, Auburn will return Derrian Gobourne’s Y1.5 and Suni Lee’s WhateverSheWants, which should be the top vault scores on the team again this season. The single best thing Lee can do to keep up with Rebeca Andrade is to develop a competition-level Cheng for the summer/fall 2023 collection, so I would imagine the Lopez (plus…) would continue being the intended direction for her college vaulting. The Y1.5s from Sara Hubbard and Cassie Stevens should once again make up the middle meat of the lineup sandwich.
The single most significant loss for Auburn on any event is no longer having Drew Watson’s Y1.5 in this vault lineup since there’s not exactly an obvious replacement for her. The best-case plan would probably be to have the Olivia Hollingsworth Y1.5 materialize, though Auburn may end up throwing a couple Yfulls into the lineup this year. That’s not going to keep pace with the best teams and their full lineups of 10.0 starts, but it’s not dire. Groth scored pretty well, especially early in the season, for her full in 2022, and Hannah Hagle brings solid amplitude and comfort level on a full as well, both of which should at least see some time, if not all the time.
BARS
2022 Event Ranking: 5
| Lineup locks: Suni Lee, Derrian Gobourne, Aria Brusch, Cassie Stevens |
| Lineup options: Adeline Sabados, Sophia Groth, Piper Smith, Anna Sumner, Olivia Hollingsworth, Piper Smith, Hannah Hagle, Gabby McLaughlin |
Auburn returns everybody from the 2022 lineup, and with no new gymnasts aggressively pushing their way into the bars six, staying exactly the same here seems like a pretty solid plan to me. Certainly, Lee and Gobourne will lead the charge, with the main question for Lee being what routine composition will get her the most 10s. Aria Brusch had an exceptionally strong season on bars as well in 2022, and Cassie Stevens likely secured her 2023 place by hitting every week last season.
Adeline Sabados has been a fixture of this lineup for pretty much her whole career, and Sophia Groth broke into the lineup toward the middle of the 2022 season and typically notched some big numbers, while also being a little more prone to 9.7s. Those six would represent a complete return of the 2022 lineup and, gasp, about the same scoring expectations. In terms of potential disruptions to that group, Anna Sumner missed last season but did get some 9.8s in 2021, and Piper Smith had a couple falls in her five routines last year but also has been to the 9.9s twice in her career.
BEAM
2022 Event Ranking: 4
| Lineup locks: Suni Lee, Sophia Groth, Gabby McLaughlin, Cassie Stevens, Aria Brusch |
| Lineup options: Olivia Hollingsworth, Hannah Hagle, Piper Smith, Hailey John, Morgan Leigh Oldham |
Beam ranked as Auburn’s best event last season and loses exactly zero routines, so like bars, there’s probably not an extreme amount of urgency to change things in 2023. While Suni Lee absolutely shockingly led the team on beam in 2022—the only surprise may have been that her beam NQS ended up higher than her bars NQS—the big win was getting nearly equivalent scores from Sophia Groth, someone who had pretty low beam scores at the end of her L10 career because of consistency struggles but who hit 15-for-15 in the 2022 season with nothing lower than 9.800. Meanwhile, Gabby McLaughlin went 9.9+ on beam nine different times in 2022 and comes in as the #3 returning beamer. So that looks pretty good.
As on bars, Cassie Stevens and Aria Brusch competed the entirety of last season for solid scores, and no one really seems to be knocking them out of those positions that they have secured for themselves. Hollingsworth provided the sixth lineup routine in 2022, and Auburn will expect to have Hagle as a possibility as well as Piper Smith, who did go 9.900 one time in each of the last two seasons.
FLOOR
2022 Event Ranking: 6
| Lineup locks: Derrian Gobourne, Suni Lee, Sophia Groth, Cassie Stevens |
| Lineup options: Aria Brusch, Olivia Hollingsworth, Sara Hubbard, Hannah Hagle, Gabby McLaughlin, Adeline Sabados, Morgan Leigh Oldham, Ananda Brown |
Technically, floor was Auburn’s lowest-ranked event in 2022, but since it ranked 6th, that’s not such a big concern. The concern may be how to make up for the lost routine from Drew Watson, though on floor there are several more gymnasts than on vault who have not yet reached their full potential but really should make a lineup based on their ability. In theory, floor should be Hollingsworth’s best event, and while we haven’t seen that much floor from her in college lately, her open 1/2-in-1/2-out looked strong in Auburn’s preview meet. Similarly, Sara Hubbard’s full-in should have a place in a floor lineup as long as Auburn finds a leap combination that can work without getting her stuck sub-9.8, and we’re still waiting on the potential of Ananda Brown’s L10 floor routine to be fulfilled.
You could see any one of them breaking into a lineup where the locked-in back half is going to be high quality with Gobourne, Lee, and Groth getting the biggest scores and Stevens not far behind. Brusch was out of the lineup for a bit of the middle of 2022 after not showing a lot of floor in 2021, but she returned for the championship meets for 9.8s in 4 of 5 routines and seems like the odds-on option again, though one that could be knocked out of the six depending on how many of those potential-heavy routines come through this year. Despite losing Watson, Auburn won’t anticipate dropping tenths on floor in 2023.
2023 LSU Tigers
[wptb id=95709]
Ranking History
2022 – 18th
2021 – 6th
2020 – 6th
2019 – 2nd
2018 – 4th
2017 – 2nd
2016 – 2nd
2015 – 10th
2014 – 3rd
2013 – 5th
2012 – 9th
Where 2022 Finished…
So it didn’t turn out…awesome. A favorite to advance to nationals at least, LSU had its 2022 season prematurely cut short in the regional semifinal when a counting beam fall and some compounding bars problems (and a limited Haleigh Bryant) saw the Tigers lose to both Missouri and Iowa and get eliminated before the round of 16, ending with one of the team’s weakest-ever results in 18th place.
While that actual 18th place will be filed under “just one of those things,” the more pressing issue for LSU is that the team was sort of 5th-7th in the hierarchy all season long, which again mimicked the 6th-place finish from 2021. It’s not bad, but it’s also not exactly the goal a program like LSU will have for itself, especially after all those seasons of 2nd place and expecting a championship. The question for 2023 isn’t whether LSU will be better than 18th. It will be. The question is whether LSU can be better than 6th, which has been the constant status so far in the Jay Clark era (extending right to this year’s preseason coaches poll).
Gains and Losses
| LOST | GAINED |
| Sarah Edwards – VT, FX | Cammy Hall |
| Christina Desiderio – BB, FX | Annie Beard |
| Sami Durante – UB (VT, BB) | Ashley Cowan |
| Bridget Dean – BB | Bryce Wilson |
| Reagan Campbell – (BB, FX) | |
| Rebecca D’Antonio |
The New Ones
LSU has three first-year newcomers, led by Bryce Wilson who has been a staple of Nastia Cups and L10 Nationals for years now. Wilson’s best event has always been vault, which earned her three 10.0s in the 2022 season, but floor is pretty much right up there and also snatched a top-5 finish at nationals this year. While she did not feature in the main six on either event at LSU’s Gym 101 (perhaps slightly concerning), she performed in exhibition positions and her presence in those lineups will be at least a long-term goal if not a short-term goal since Wilson is known as one of the top L10 vault-floor prospects in this year’s class. Beam also should be a legitimate lineup option, and while she did not perform on bars at the 101, it was always a good score for her in L10. We should see by far the most of Wilson among the new LSU gymnasts.
Ashley Cowan is predominantly a bars gymnast, known for her release amplitude, who won her age group on bars at nationals this year. LSU has at least one spot in that bars lineup that definitely needs filling, and Cowan should be in the race with a couple other gymnasts there. Her next-best event possibility would be floor, where she is a good twister with a front 2/1 in her pocket.
Rounding out the class is Annie Beard, the former Texas Dreams junior elite who has been around the L10 circuit for a few years now post-elite, regularly placing well on vault, beam, and floor. LSU is in need of some new beam routines this year to restock from that graduated class, so if she’s healthy, Beard would pretty much be at the top of the list of possible new beamers.
LSU also welcomed Utah transfer Cammy Hall to the team for her fifth year in 2023. Hall would have ideally provided a lineup Y1.5 on vault, but she will miss the season with injury.
Event by Event
VAULT
2022 Event Ranking: 3
| Lineup locks: Haleigh Bryant, Kiya Johnson, KJ Johnson, Aleah Finnegan, Alyona Shchennikova |
| Lineup options: Bryce Wilson, Elena Arenas, Chase Brock, Alexis Jeffrey |
LSU’s hopes to upgrade the vault lineup took a bit of a hit this preseason with Cammy Hall being ruled out. She would have seemed a natural replacement for the lost Y1.5 from Sarah Edwards, but it turns out that 10.0-start replacement is instead going to come from Aleah Finnegan, who showed a very nice Omelianchik at Gym 101 that should now be a lock for the lineup. LSU will also want to develop a lineup routine from Bryce Wilso, especially considering the DTY she wowed with in L10, as that would now seem the best path to upgrading the vault scores. But at least keeping pace with last year’s vaulting seems likely.
As for the returners, Haleigh Bryant brings her handspring pike 1/2 back, and Kiya Johnson brings her DTY back, so those will be huge scores again. We can assume that Shchennikova’s Y1.5 will be vital again this year, and KJ Johnson’s Yfull was one of the team’s best vault scores last season and should be the same this time. Those four, along with Finnegan and Wilson, probably make up the ideal vault lineup, though Elena Arenas’s full is very clean and sometimes stuck, so any other 10.0 starts or fulls are going to have to be quite reliable to knock her out of the lineup.
BARS
2022 Event Ranking: 10
| Lineup locks: Alyona Shchennikova, Kiya Johnson, Haleigh Bryant, Olivia Dunne |
| Lineup options: Aleah Finnegan, Alexis Jeffrey, Elena Arenas, Ashley Cowan, Tori Tatum, Chase Brock, Kamryn Ryan |
Bars was LSU’s lowest-ranked event in 2022 and has now lost Sami Durante, so there’s some work to do to get back up to conference-winning level on this event. Still, most of last year’s lineup members look like they remain the best available options. Haleigh Bryant came through as a bars star last season for 9.9s almost every week and will be a big deal again this year. Meanwhile, Kiya Johnson will show up with the crispest, most reliable routine on the team in the leadoff spot, probably for 9.825s again, and we’ll spend a lot of time talking about Shchennikova’s double pikeout every time she goes 9.925. Sunrise, sunset, these things all seem like givens.
Olivia Dunne has been dealing with labrum injuries but looked pretty close to being ready to go on bars at the Gym 101, just doing her dismount separately, so we can probably feel comfortable putting her back into this lineup, where her execution will certainly earn her a spot again as long as she’s healthy.
The best upgrade (slash Durante replacement) option for this lineup will come from Aleah Finnegan, who did one bars routine for 9.850 in 2022 but will probably need to do bars every week in 2023. The piked Deltchev looks great, so as long as she has a consistent dismount, she’d be an obvious choice for the lineup and a contender for one of the best scores.
The sixth spot looks like kind of a free-for-all right now with a lot of 9.750 gymnastics bumping around, and someone will need to turn into a reliable 9.850+ if LSU is to avoid dropping ground on bars this year. I thought Alexis Jeffrey looked like the best choice at the Gym 101, but they’ll also have Elena Arenas, who ended up in the final lineup last year, and newcomer Ashley Cowan. The mysterious Tori Tatum, a former elite and L10 standout, did also show a bars routine after not competing in 2022.
BEAM
2022 Event Ranking: 5
| Lineup locks: Kiya Johnson, Haleigh Bryant, Aleah Finnegan, Kai Rivers |
| Lineup options: Bryce Wilson, Alyona Shchennikova, Annie Beard, Elena Arenas, KJ Johnson, Sierra Ballard, Olivia Dunne |
With the losses of Desiderio, Dean, Campbell, and Durante, LSU’s supply of beam routines took a hit and the depth chart here looks the most different from 2022. Finding out the identities of last couple members of this lineup could be a process.
In the lock department, we have the top three returning scores from last year’s team: Kiya Johnson, Haleigh Bryant, and Aleah Finnegan. They’re the three best beamers on this roster and will be called upon for weekly 9.9s to make sure this event score stays competitive. Because of injury, Kai Rivers is likely to be limited to beam this season, but expect to see her in this lineup because she is the best proven entity among the remaining beamers on the roster with three 9.9s over her eight career beam routines, all hit. Rivers is the most important figure in Operation Restock Beam.
As for the remaining spots in the lineup, we may have another free-for-all. If she’s available, you want Annie Beard in there. Elena Arenas performed two beam routines last season, both for 9.8s, and it looks like Bryce Wilson is going to provide a nominee. Shchennikova is not always the most sure thing on beam (and wouldn’t have received credit for an acro series at the 101), but she has competed a number of times before, and typically for countable scores. LSU also showed off beam routines from a couple unexpected characters in leg-event specialists KJ Johnson and Sierra Ballard, who I would say exceeded expectations in their beam routines but probably don’t have the leaps for huge scores.
As these bars and beam lineups go, so will LSU in 2023. Finding those new athletes to fill the fifth and sixth spots with 9.875s instead of 9.775s will be essential if this is to be a top-4 season.
FLOOR
2022 Event Ranking: 8
| Lineup locks: Kiya Johnson, Haleigh Bryant, KJ Johnson, Alyona Shchennikova, Aleah Finnegan |
| Lineup options: Sierra Ballard, Olivia Dunne, Elena Arenas, Bryce Wilson, Chase Brock |
Floor should be among the more predictable (and stronger) events for LSU in 2023, as long as everyone stays healthy enough to compete regularly. The team returns six athletes who all received multiple 9.9s on floor last year in Kiya Johnson, Haleigh Bryant, KJ Johnson, Alyona Shchennikova, Aleah Finnegan, and Olivia Dunne, and I’d contend it’s the most impressive apparatus for Johnson, Johnson, and Shchennikova (and only isn’t for Bryant because her vault is…her vault). You’d be quite happy with those six as floor lineup, and it’s probably the ideal choice for LSU. What curtailed LSU’s floor ranking journey last season was that there always seemed to be someone (or someones) out that week, whether it was Kiya Johnson at the beginning of the season, or Bryant at the end, or Shchennikova for a while in there. The best-case lineup wasn’t all together very often and will need to be together more in 2023.
In terms of other options for the inevitable times when the best-case lineup isn’t together, Sierra Ballard and Elena Arenas both competed last season for 9.7s and will probably be called upon again this season. Ballard’s DLO always does make for a theoretically compelling option, and she was the one who made it into the main six in place of Dunne at the 101, where Bryce Wilson and Chase Brock also showed routines.
2023 Michigan Wolverines
[wptb id=95696]
Ranking History
2022 – 8th
2021 – 1st
2020 – 5th
2019 – 5th
2018 – 13th
2017 – 10th
2016 – 11th
2015 – 7th
2014 – 10th
2013 – 7th
2012 – 13th
Where 2022 Finished…
It was always going to be a challenge to repeat 2021’s championship performance in 2022, but Michigan gave it a good run, starting out as the most prepared team and occupying the top spot in the rankings for the first two months of the season. Oklahoma and Florida caught and passed Michigan as we headed toward the meat of the season, but Michigan remained a top-4 team and championship-qualifying favorite going into nationals, where a bars and beam implosion dashed the team’s hopes and saddled Michigan with a fairly unrepresentative 8th-place finish.
In retaining nearly the entire roster from last season, Michigan will expect to improve on 8th in 2023 and return to the top-4 status that these athletes have regularly occupied for the last two years.
Gains and Losses
| LOST | GAINED |
| Abby Brenner – VT, UB, FX | Kaylen Morgan |
| Lily Clapper | |
| Farah Lipetz | |
| Paige Thaxton |
The New Ones
Michigan doesn’t have all that much replacement work to do in terms of lineups but does bring in four new athletes, each with their own significant prior accomplishments. Of note, we saw extremely little from this first-year class at Michigan’s preseason performance, just two routines in exhibition slots and nothing that you would put in a lineup right now. If Michigan doesn’t get a lot out of this class in 2023, that probably wouldn’t be dire since the returning lineups are already hearty, but it would be significant in assessing what Michigan might do in a post-Wojcik/Heiskell/Brooks/Wilson world.
Among Michigan’s new class, Kaylen Morgan‘s is the most recognizable name from her five years as an elite, up to and including the beginning of the 2022 elite calendar. Her most impressive event has always been bars, with an NCAA-ready skill set and handstands, so Michigan will primarily look to get that routine in the mix when fully healthy. Still, all four events should be options. We saw a Yurchenko full from Morgan at the exhibition that Michigan probably doesn’t need right now but exists.
Lily Clapper is the younger sister of Leah, which you’ll know every time you look at a Michigan meet this season and think, “I didn’t know Leah Clapper transferred to Michigan.” She finished 8th AA in her division at L10 Nationals this year, which speaks to her capability on all four. Bars may be her college-iest event—also the one routine we saw from her in the exhibition—but you wouldn’t be shocked if she pulled a Leah and suddenly became indispensable on beam as her career went on.
We didn’t see anything from the other two at the exhibition, but Paige Thaxton is a L10 national bars champion from 2021 in Senior B, who has also worked a Yurchenko 1.5 along with several huge tumbling options and would basically be among the top L10s in the country if you didn’t have to do leaps on beam. So she’s one to keep an eye on. Meanwhile, Farah Lipetz missed the 2022 L10 season but put up top-20 finishes at L10 Nationals in 2021 on bars and beam, her two strongest events.
Event By Event
VAULT
2022 Event Ranking: 1
| Lineup locks: Sierra Brooks, Natalie Wojcik, Gabby Wilson, Naomi Morrison, Abby Heiskell |
| Lineup options: Reyna Guggino, Jenna Mulligan, Kaylen Morgan, Nicoletta Koulos, Paige Thaxton, Jacey Vore, Lily Clapper |
Michigan’s All 1.5s All The Time vault lineup spent another season in the top ranking spot in 2022. The only loss from the gang is Abby Brenner (who vaulted three times last season but did not make Michigan’s final lineup), so at this point there’s every reason to expect the same six Yurchenko 1.5s that made Michigan’s vault lineup last season to do so again this season with Guggino, Wojcik, Wilson, Morrison, Heiskell, and Brooks. There are some other theoretical 1.5s on this team, like the one Jacey Vore had as a L10, but since we haven’t seen evidence of those, one would think the idea is to keep the lineup the same.
Should there be injuries, or questions about Guggino’s consistency, Michigan will have a couple other backups vaulters—Jenna Mulligan’s full is the only other vault that saw competition time last season—but any Yfulls are going to be Plan B.
BARS
2022 Event Ranking: 4
| Lineup locks: Natalie Wojcik, Sierra Brooks, Abby Heiskell, Naomi Morrison |
| Lineup options: Gabby Wilson, Kaylen Morgan, Carly Bauman, Jacey Vore, Nicoletta Koulos, Paige Thaxton, Ashley Lane, Farah Lipetz, Lily Clapper |
Michigan will have an interesting dynamic on bars this season because even though there’s not much replacement work absolutely needing to be done here (just the lost routine from Brenner), there are a number of different moving pieces and a variety of options that could end up being part of the best lineup.
No questions will be posed about the top three returning bars scores from Wojcik, Brooks, and Heiskell. You wouldn’t put together any lineup without them. Based on her history of 9.9s, you’d also want Gabby Wilson in this six, but she did not compete bars in the second half of last season and did not show a bars routine in the exhibition, so we’ll have to see what the health status is for that routine. While Naomi Morrison didn’t get quite the same scores on bars last season as the big hitters, she competed pretty much every week, only missed once, and would seem likely to return. Ideally, Michigan will also get a bars routine out of first-year Kaylen Morgan, who would definitely make the lineup based on any assumptions of what her college bars can look like based on elite.
You certainly wouldn’t sneeze at that six, but also contending for spots will be Jacey Vore, who competed most weeks last season and got several 9.9s in there, and Carly Bauman, who is returning from her Achilles injury to make a push for a lineup that she was in during the 2021 season. If it turns out that Wilson and Morgan aren’t available, or aren’t available right away, you’d look to Vore and Bauman as the most likely, useful lineup members.
And then there’s Nicoletta Koulos, who typically serves as an “I can do anything as needed for 9.8ish” option for Michigan—as well as the rest of this bars-heavy new class that really should make its mark on this event. If everyone is healthy, Michigan has some challenging decisions to make in trying to shuffle the pieces of Wilson, Morrison, Morgan, Vore, and Bauman into the last few lineup spots, and if some of the other first years start meet their bars potential, deciding the six could become a real challenge. Which also means there could be potential for a score upgrade.
BEAM
2022 Event Ranking: 11
| Lineup locks: Natalie Wojcik, Sierra Brooks, Abby Heiskell, Gabby Wilson |
| Lineup options: Naomi Morrison, Carly Bauman, Jacey Vore, Reyna Guggino, Nicoletta Koulos, Kaylen Morgan, Lily Clapper, Ashley Lane, Farah Lipetz |
Beam is the real puzzler for Michigan because even before the events of the national semifinal last season, it was the team’s lowest-ranked apparatus and most likely to get stuck in the 49.1s and 49.2s. When Oklahoma and Florida are like, “Do you want this 49.7? My tiara vault has too many tiaras in it,” a 49.2 isn’t going to be competitive enough. In 2023, Michigan will look for ways to upgrade the beam lineup, yet theoretically this isn’t lineup that should even need much of an upgrade. Wojcik, Heiskell, Brooks, Wilson, Morrison? On paper, it’s grand. But in practice it ranked 11th.
In the 2021 season, Carly Bauman was a mainstay in this lineup and received a couple 9.9s, so she looks like the best opportunity for Michigan to ramp up its weekly meat-and-potatoes beam scores from last season. Vore also made the final lineup last season and could knock out one of the main five (or join them again) if she continues to be a little more toward the 9.9 side than the 9.8 side. Still, it seems Michigan’s main beam-improvement strategy may be just to…stay on for all six routines this time. Last season’s lineups were often marked by one fall that could be dropped but meant a couple other 9.825s had to count, and the score was lost.
FLOOR
2022 Event Ranking: 1
| Lineup locks: Gabby Wilson, Sierra Brooks, Naomi Morrison, Natalie Wojcik, Abby Heiskell |
| Lineup options: Nicoletta Koulos, Reyna Guggino, Carly Bauman, Paige Thaxton, Kaylen Morgan, Ashley Lane |
Michigan will experience much less angst about floor than about beam. Thanks to the team’s novel “act like you’ve actually hit a floor routine before” January strategy, Michigan opened strongly on floor in 2022 and never looked back, and nearly the entire lineup returns. While the quintet of Wilson, Brooks, Morrison, Wojcik, and Heiskell are the easy picks on every event, on floor (like on vault) you put that in pen and have no further questions. Moving on.
Michigan will still need an answer for the sixth spot in this lineup for 2023, and several should present themselves. This could be Nicoletta Koulos’s time. She was really starting to come into her own for 9.9s at the end of the 2021 season before an injury curtailed her preparation and contribution in 2022. At Michigan’s December exhibition, she looked like she was back to being the best solution. Reyna Guggino hasn’t always shown the landing consistency to get into the lineup, but she’s typically good for a mid-9.8 on her hit days and could figure here. Similarly, Jenna Mulligan has competed three floor routines in her career, all for 9.8s. Probably not a counting score on this team, but definitely something you could put out there.
As for the semi-unknown new ones, considering her L10 routine that featured both a DLO and an open full-in in the same routine that wasn’t even under the elite code, it would be negligent not to consider Paige Thaxton for this lineup.