I’ll have deep individual previews of the top schools coming in December, but for now, check out the team roster notes to aid with all your lineup prognostication needs. (Because I’m just assuming that you’re me and doing that.)

FINAL SEASON RANKINGS
2018 – 1st
2017 – 4th
2016 – 5th
2015 – 11th
2014 – 8th
2013 – 4th
2012 – 3rd
2011 – 2nd
2010 – 1st
2009 – 7th

THE STORY
Let’s be honest, for all of UCLA’s improvements in the 2018 season, none of us actually expected the Bruins to win the championship. They were supposed to finish 2nd or 3rd, make great strides to set up a title run in 2019, do a life lesson or two, and close the book on an altogether successful season. That’s not what happened. Christmas came early.

Winning a title bestows de facto favorite status the following year, yet UCLA will know that the 2018 victory did in fact come early. It was an upset, a phenomenal two-event performance on the day but an untenable strategy to maintain if this is to become a dynasty. “We’ll be ranked 3rd all year long, be kind of blah in the first two rotations of the final, and then Peng will get a 20, and wheeee!” isn’t exactly how you draw it up.

Now that this UCLA group has won a title, there’s no going back in terms of expectations, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t improvements to be made. The 2019 roster was always supposed to be better than 2018’s team and does have realistic areas where it can aim higher, scoring weaknesses from 2018 to resolve, and lost meets from last season to win this time around so that a potential title this year would not be an upset. It would be normal.

You guys, a tradition is over. We can’t talk about Kyla Ross’s mythical 10.0 start on vault in the UCLA preview this year because it’s not mythical anymore. We saw it for realsies at Meet the Bruins as part of what will be an upgraded vault lineup in 2019. With just two 10.0s, UCLA’s 2018 vault team didn’t have the start values to get the necessary 49.4s in a postseason-scoring context, but this year’s lineup looks significantly more competitive. Continue reading 2019 Preview – UCLA Bruins →

FINAL SEASON RANKINGS
2018 – 2nd
2017 – 1st
2016 – 1st
2015 – 3rd
2014 – 1st
2013 – 2nd
2012 – 7th
2011 – 3rd
2010 – 2nd
2009 – 10th

THE STORY
Oklahoma is really thrilled about finishing second last year. So much fun with second place. La la la. Everything’s great.

Obviously, they’ve been accidentally shattering wine glasses about it all offseason—after spending the entire 2018 season as the best team in the country, breaking the all-time RQS mark, and then recording the 6th-best score in Super Six history only to be defeated on the day by the smallest of margins. As such, it’s not really a postseason that Oklahoma will look back on in a “what went wrong” kind of way—other than the mistake not to hack the NCAA in the dead of night so that they could have ended on beam instead of UCLA.

The finish in 2018 also makes the story for Oklahoma’s 2019 season fairly straightforward. The Sooners did everything except win the title last season, so this year, rectifying that with a championship will be the only satisfying result, as well as a very attainable one. Anything less will feel like a letdown.

In 2019, Oklahoma will once again march toward that long-sought holy grail, a postseason vault lineup of entirely 10.0 starts. It hasn’t ever happened before but once again looks possible for Oklahoma this season. Continue reading 2019 Preview – Oklahoma Sooners →

FINAL SEASON RANKINGS
2018 – 3rd
2017 – 3rd
2016 – 4th
2015 – 1st
2014 – 1st
2013 – 1st
2012 – 2nd
2011 – 7th
2010 – 5th
2009 – 4th

THE STORY
It’s tough to sneer at third place. That’s a solid result any team would be pleased with, and Florida has achieved that in each of the last two seasons, finishing 2018 as the #1 team in the SEC after out-touching LSU by an eighth of a tenth (FUN WITH NATIONALS SCORING) in Super Six.

But. In all three seasons of the Rowland Era so far, Florida’s roster has been talented enough to win the national championship (never more so than last season), and it has yet to happen. That’s why Florida won’t be over the moon about these third-place finishes. We all expect even better than third place from this roster. In 2019, the same is true. Despite the admittedly massive scoring losses from last season’s squad, Florida still boasts an insane team. Thomas? Baumann? Boren? Hundley? Gowey? Johnson-Scharpf? On names alone, you’d pick this roster over any other in the country, including Oklahoma and UCLA.

Still, we can’t go on names alone, or talent alone. This Florida team—now no longer featuring any team members from the Rhonda championship years—must prove that it can transfer its talent from an on-paper championship to an actual championship. Otherwise, we’re looking at another year of close-but-not-quite.

Florida has a ton of work ahead in order to retain its status as one of the top vaulting teams, the Gators having to do without four of their five best vaults from 2018—losing McMurtry, Slocum, and Baker to graduation and Foberg to injury. Continue reading 2019 Preview – Florida Gators →

You can find the individual previews for the top-finishing Pac-12 teams from 2018 at the links here.

UCLA (coming soon)
Utah
Cal

But for today, let’s play the lineup game with the remaining Pac-12 teams.

Washington will hope to trot out a new-look vault lineup in 2019 with a couple freshmen who have competed 10.0 starts in JO competition (Cunningham with a 1.5, Brooks with an Omel) and Geneva Thompson, who sports a strong full in her return from injury. All crucial pieces in the project to get the lineup out of the 9.7s.

Washington returns Monica Riley, who has emerged as a bars star in the past year and will be relied on again for 9.9s atop a lineup that should be pretty consistent with last season’s group. Washington will hope that the spot vacated by Burleson can be filled by Meaghan Ruttan, who showed a lot of potential on bars in her Canadian elite days. Continue reading 2019 Preview – Pac-12 Roundup →