Red alert. There are just three weeks left in the regular season. How does this always happen? The preseason is a million centuries long. Fortunately, in these last three weeks until conference championships, the meets are packing in an acceptable amount of value. Especially this Friday, with another juicy slate of SEC meets and an interloping Pac-12 match-up between Utah and Oregon State that’s particularly interesting as Oregon State tries to position itself for Regionals. As we move into this part of the season, the meets involving the teams ranked 11-14 become some of the most important as those teams try to claw over each other to avoid a bad Regional placement. 1/12/13 is the death Regional, the most likely Regional for a team to hit the meet and not advance, as Oregon State did—relatively—last year (196.525) and Auburn did the year before (196.700).

In the rankings, Oklahoma is set at #1 for another week, but LSU can get pretty close with a great showing. Oklahoma’s ranking lead has been very, very safe for a number of weeks, but they’ll have to start turning things up now to make sure it stays that way. LSU has a 196.600 road score to get rid of, so they should be able to remain out of the reach of Florida and Utah in the #2 spot with a hit meet. With a 196.725 still to be dropped, Utah is in a similarly solid position to jump up in RQS, but to do it, they have to prove they can get the road scores. They have just the one great road score so far (@ Arizona) and will need several more to challenge the big girls. It will be a little harder for Florida to move up, but they’re at home, so you never know. If the Gators get another one of those home 198s, they can shake things up if LSU and Utah are just OK tomorrow.

Alabama, Michigan, and Auburn are all at home and all unlikely to change their RQS significantly, but Auburn’s position is the most vulnerable right now. With three solid home scores already, Auburn will not be able to increase RQS too much even with a great meet. However the trailing teams—Nebraska, Georgia, and UCLA—all have sub-196 scores (sub-195 in the case of UCLA) that they’re itching to get rid of this weekend. All three have to potential to jump ahead of Auburn with regular, solid performances. The bottom half of the top 10 may be the area of greatest flux this weekend. 

Friday’s action begins with Florida going after that massive home score against Kentucky, but the two most interesting meets of the day will be Georgia/Auburn and LSU/Alabama. Auburn has been getting the scores and zooming up the rankings the last few weeks, but are they really ready to jump into the top half of the SEC and unseat a perennial (the perennial) power? We’ll find out. As with all Georgia meets this year, beam and floor will be the deciders. While I favor Georgia on both vault and bars—if Georgia doesn’t have a healthy lead at the halfway point, it’s bad news—Auburn has been the stronger beam team over the last month. Megan Walker has quietly emerged as one of the best beamers in the country, and she has a family of supporting 9.875s behind her from Atkinson, Demers, and Guy. Beam is the event where they can pounce. Georgia has its own crop of exceptionally talented beam workers, but the wobble goblins are a bigger worry. Even during last week’s season high, they had one really great hit from Box (and solid work from Babalis), but it was not a confident or clean rotation overall.

But really, this meet for Georgia is all about the floor. They have to recover from that garbage rotation last week. If they don’t, none of the other apparatuses will matter. That Georgia floor is the rotation I’m most excited for this weekend. The time to work through problems has already run out. We’re going into March now, the month to perfect details, not learn how to hit.

Overlapping that meet will be the LSU/Alabama clash, which is more important for Alabama than it is for LSU. Sure, LSU would love to pick up a juicy score and put the pressure on Oklahoma in the rankings, but right now the Tigers are in a fairly comfortable position both numerically and qualitatively. Alabama has been making a lot of progress over the last couple weeks to get those competitive 197s. They’re up to a season-high ranking now, but they’re still on the outside of that top flight of teams. A win over LSU, coupled with a win over Florida earlier this year, would mean they should be in the title conversation, not just the Super Six conversation. Of course, both of those meets are at home (March 6th in Missouri should be a good opportunity to gauge how Alabama looks at a less enthusiastic, more conservatively judged road meet), but another win would still be significant. There’s also the matter of the home winning streak to deal with, and all.

The issue for Alabama in this meet is that, so far this season, the two teams have showed similar strengths with LSU just a tad better in each department. If Alabama is going to win in a hit meet from both teams, they’ll need to stick more vault landings than LSU (and more than they did in Georgia) and be more precise with the bars landings as well. LSU looked very nice on bars last week, but they were shuffling and stepping and twitching just ever so slightly. If Alabama brings those blamo Alabama bars sticks from years past, they may pick up ground. It would also help if LSU has one of those bad floor landings meets, but they seemed to exorcise that demon last week. Almost entirely.

As mentioned, a few of the Pac-12 teams have some important scores to get, not just Oregon State and UCLA, but Stanford as well. With few meets left, Stanford has some 195s they have to get rid of now. Price and Vaculik are working their way back at just the right time to help the team put together some real meets, which is very much the Stanford way of going about things. You don’t have to get 196s until March. Also keep an eye on Minnesota. They’re moving on up. They had a beamtastrophe in their most recent meet (and that event remains a worry), but they’re starting to put consistent 49 rotations together on the other piece. With even a regular lower-midish 196 this weekend, they can start to put pressure on Stanford, Oregon State and Penn State and make the 11-14 zone just that much more threatening.

Top 25 Schedule
Friday, February 27

It’s a showdown weekend. Across two days, we have five different meets featuring perennial Nationals qualifiers facing off with each other, so expect some sparks to fly…is what I would be saying if wins and losses mattered. As it is, expect a lot of simultaneous high-quality gymnastics (no flipping to another meet for half the routines) as all the teams iterate that they’re only focused on themselves and don’t really care what anyone else is doing. 

In the rankings, we’ll see the biggest shakeup of the season on Monday once the new RQS standings debut. Feel free to check out my RQS breakdown to see where teams are likely to end up and what ugly scores they still need to drop. Oklahoma is guaranteed to retain the #1 ranking for at least another week, as neither Florida nor LSU can get within a tenth of a point of them after this weekend’s competition. The Sooners have a bit of a lead. Utah has a chance to move up as high as #2 with a solid 197, but they would also need Florida/LSU to be a bit of a splatfest, so that seems less likely. The introduction of RQS is the best news for Georgia and Stanford as both teams look primed to jump in the rankings even if they have poor meets this weekend.

Alabama is visiting Georgia, and Dana Duckworth has been having sugarplum dreams of a delicious victory over the old arch-nemesis all week. Alabama is on the upswing after last week’s result, while Georgia is still sort of all over the place. It looked like the Gym Dogs were pulling things together, but then last week’s performance featured a beam fall and a whole royal court of 9.7s. Having to count a Mary Beth Box fall on beam is a blip, but the 9.7s are the real concern. Those are still way too likely to show up on both beam and floor, with tenativeness on beam and flatness on floor, and they need to turn back into 9.825-9.850s this weekend. The good news for Georgia is that they still have a weak 195 on their RQS, so even an average performance is going to look pretty good in the rankings.

Simultaneously, Oklahoma will be visiting Michigan. The meet will be tape delayed on the Big Ten Network but shown live on BTNPlus. BTNPlus and I are in a fight right now (heads up, trying to cancel a BTNPlus subscription is harder than climbing Everest), so you gallant heroes who watch it can keep the rest of us posted in the comments if you feel like it. Oklahoma doesn’t really have to worry about scores now, but they had a little bit of a meh last week on beam—the only event where they’re not #1 in the country—so point a discerning eye at the security of that rotation this week. There all still some consistency issues on both bars and beam (not major issues, more random 9.7s here and there issues) that they’ll need to iron out over the next month.

Michigan is also coming off an OK. Lindsay Williams had a random poor meet, so watch to make sure that’s not a snowball situation, but the major routines of interest will be Nicole Artz on floor and Austin Sheppard on vault. Artz has gone OOB two weeks in a row, and they rely on her for Sampson-esque scores, and Sheppard finally came on vault last week but just did a Yhalf tucked, so let’s hope we get another step forward this week.

Later on, the feature meet will be Florida against LSU. While Alabama and Oklahoma come in as the relative favorites in their meets, there isn’t a favorite in this one. It’s all to play for. Bars is going to be really interesting, partially because of how much variation we’ve seen in the landing quality from these two teams and how much influence that should have in the result, but mostly because we’re allegedly going to see the triumphant return of Bridget Sloan. I know that it will have been 7 weeks since her injury (and we were originally told she would be out six weeks), but doesn’t it still seem super fast? For all the chatter about the significance of her injury, she has come back in about a millisecond. The bars rotation is where they need her the most, and even if she’s very much in “I”m still fragile” mode (as I would expect), she makes that lineup look so much better. Discussion question: Who would you take out? And, scandalously, is it Kennedy Baker?

On vault, Florida has been the better team so far this year, but LSU has the talent for equivalent scores (though they miss that second 10-potential vault that Florida has in the Hunter/McMurtry duo). If LSU gets the landings from last week, there shouldn’t be much difference in the scores at all/a slight advantage to LSU. Similarly, the two teams have tended to be pretty evenly match on floor. I would say that, at its ideal, LSU is the stronger floor team 1-6, but Florida is more likely to get hugely huge numbers from Baker and Hunter to lift the overall rotation score. LSU should get about the same scores from Courville/Hall, but haven’t often enough this year. Last weekend was a good example.

In the LSU column, the main advantage event should be beam. Florida is coming off a huge beam score last weekend, but overall, LSU has more likely 9.9s in that lineup, which Florida has a couple more just-fine 9.825-9.850 routines in there. Beam is always a question because it’s beam, but to come out with a win, LSU needs to take advantage of how much pretty they have. It will be very tough to beat Florida if they’re counting wobbles for 9.8s. What I’m saying is, this should be a good one.

On Saturday, UCLA hosts Nebraska in an essential meet for both teams. Nebraska is suddenly in fairly urgent need of a strong road score and can’t waste this opportunity to get one if they’re going to maintain a solid ranking through the rest of the season, while UCLA kind of needs to put together a complete meet. That means no random 9.6s on bars, no beam falls, and bringing the landings on vault and floor. UCLA can be a mid 197 team at home if they do that, but we haven’t seen it yet.

Utah also hosts Stanford in a meet that is much more important for the Cardinal than the Utes. Sure, Utah would love to get back to its home, high 197, 10 parade ways, but Stanford needs a score. Like now. They have just four meets left before Regionals, are already counting a mid 196 road score, and can’t afford to throw in another beautiful disaster. Just keep the beautiful part.

As always, the full schedule is available at the top.

Top 25 Schedule
Friday, February 20

This weekend, we’ll have mostly the usual Friday hyper-saturation of meets with 7 of the top 10 teams in action, but at least they’re a little more spread out this time. So that’s something. This is more like how it should be.

But this time around, Saturday is also a pretty big day with Utah, UCLA, Stanford, Georgia, and Nebraska all in action. Hopefully there’s as little Valentine’s Day folderol as possible during those meets. Everyone already has a pink meet so that they can pat themselves on the back for raising awareness. We don’t need more opportunities for everyone to douse themselves in reds and pinks. You know someone is going to show up wearing 178 red bows with candy hearts tied to them and a box of chocolates hidden under her rat’s nest bun. You know it.  

In the rankings, don’t expect much action on top. Now that teams have several meets under their belts, but still before RQS kicks in (Feb 23), it’s much harder to manage a big jump in season average. If Oklahoma keeps doing what they’re doing and getting mid 197s, they’re safe at #1. Even LSU would need a 7 million to catch them. The top 7 teams have separated themselves from the pack a little bit, but once again this week the teams from #8-#13 could end up in any order because there’s such a small margin between them. Remember that UCLA is officially #13 but up to a provisional ranking of #8 after Monday’s 197, so they lead the peloton for the moment.  

On Friday, the action starts early with Michigan getting underway at a slightly Early Bird Discount time of 6:00 ET, so remember to make sure your brain is rested enough to be able to process lights and sounds earlier than it usually is on a Friday night. An hour later, Florida hosts Missouri and will be eager to erase the averageness from last week. Florida hasn’t had bad meets this year, but they’ve had a few just OK meets, including the recent 197.200 (which is a C+ kind of score for Florida, and frankly any team that hopes to make Super Six this year). Without Kennedy Baker, we started to see the tangible effect of all the injuries. The limits of their scoring potential were exposed, and we know now where the 9.850s run out.

Once everyone is back for Florida, expect a lot of talk about what a blessing these early-season injury issues were because they forced the team to explore depth, got tons of gymnasts comfortable competing in case they’re needed, and now they can face any challenge even an avalanche of hurricanes, etc. I’m just warning you now.

Auburn keeps challenging the good teams. They put up a legitimate fight against Alabama last week and will hope to do the same thing at home this week, though LSU is a step up from Alabama right now and will make it harder to keep pace. The Tigers scored a 198 last weekend and will receive the boost this week of having Jessie Jordan back on bars and beam. Plus, Britney Ranzy is slated to make her return on vault. They’ve been honestly fine on vault without her, but bars could really use those 9.875s she was getting last year when she’s able to get back fully. Savona is an acceptable replacement, but Ranzy’s potential is greater. Auburn, I’m watching your floor. There is too much big-tumbling talent there to peak at 9.800s. 

Boise State will be visiting Alabama a bit later, and I’m eager to check that one out because I almost never get to see Boise State compete and am always impressed by their bars when I do. So bring it. Alabama is ranked just 12th on bars and has had too many falls already this year, so it will be worth comparing that rotation to the 7th-ranked Boise State bars team. It’s unusual that Alabama would welcome a team like Boise State and look weaker on any event, and interested to see if it happens. Having Clark back there is a big boost to Alabama’s potential.

On Saturday, the Pac-12 is taking over Big 10 day. Utah is visiting Washington and trying to convince us that they are the best spoiler to the predetermined Big Three this year. They’ve had a few high-profile overscores for certain Tory Wilson vaults, which undermines them because it makes their competitiveness seem artificial. A quirk of judging instead of quality gymnastics. Let’s see how the big-scoring trend plays out on the road at Washington.

But I’m mostly excited for the UCLA/Stanford clash on Saturday, the Beautiful Disaster Rumble. Stanford is a big sack of worries right now, with Price’s growing injury list meaning that their tendency to Stanford a bunch of these lineups only increases. They’re still so lovely, but every single person has to hit every routine perfectly because there is less than no margin for error. Let’s just hope for as much Vaculik as possible. UCLA is starting to manage to pull out results and legitimate scores in spite of issues, which is the usual UCLA February story. They’ve got to work out that bars lineup. It doesn’t make me feel safe.

As always, the full weekend schedule is available at the link at the top.

Top 25 Schedule

Friday, February 13

Monday, February 16
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – Arizona State @ [19] Arizona

I need to start this week’s preview with another memo to college gymnastics to pull it together. Once again this weekend, everything in the world is happening at the exact same time. The #1, #2, #3, #4, #6, #8, #9, and #11 teams in the country are all competing simultaneously on Friday, including anticipated meets like Georgia/LSU and Auburn/Alabama, which is a big rivalry thing because the state of Alabama doesn’t have real pro sports, so this matters to people or something. How are we supposed to pay attention to all of it at once? Disaster.

In the rankings, Oklahoma has a pretty comfortable 0.3 lead on Florida and LSU entering the weekend and should be able to hang onto that #1 spot with a relatively sane, relatively hit meet. Farther down the rankings, we should see some shakeups. All the teams from #8 to #13 are ranked within 0.100 of each other, so this is an opportunity for UCLA, Georgia, and Stanford to restore some order. Or, throw their rankings away again with a billion falls. Either way.

During the barrage of meets at 8:00 ET on Friday, we’re all going to be faced with a completely appropriate use of the expression Sophie’s choice as we try to decide which meets to pay attention to. Oklahoma against Iowa State requires a school-specific subscription, so that’s right out, but otherwise, it’s a conundrum. Georgia/LSU is the biggest clash and probably the most likely to be competitive (though LSU does come in as the clear favorite), so that’s my main focus. Georgia has righted the ship with back-to-back high 196s, but it gets real now. Hitting is not enough. They have to be actually good, even on beam. To win, or at least keep it sufficiently entertaining, Georgia will have to be much closer to postseason form than they have been so far, particularly on bars.

Bars is the one event of the four where Georgia should be the stronger team. They haven’t shown that strength consistently yet this year, but if Davis, Rogers, Brown, and Jay all show up, that’s an intimidating brigade of 9.9s and the best opportunity for Georgia to pick up a lead. If they don’t get into the 49.4s on bars, it’s going to be colossally difficult for the Gymdogs to win without LSU mistakes. They’ll certainly need to build up a lead in the first half of the meet, and get the benefit of one of Brittany Rogers’ good vaults to mitigate some of LSU’s advantage there, because the Tigers have the much bigger and more consistent gymnastics on floor and will have a clear edge at the end.

I’m also interested to see what Auburn shows this weekend. The last two weekends at home, Auburn has started to debut flashes of the quality of gymnastics that makes me think they have a real shot at nationals this year, but away against Alabama is a different animal. Are they suddenly looking really 9.750 again? Or is it finally time for Caitlin Atkinson and Bri Guy to prove that they have the same talent as the Alabama anchors?  

Fair warning now that I think Friday is the only live blogging I’ll be able to do this weekend, but Saturday is Big 10 day as usual. Expect Michigan and Nebraska to record comfortable wins. Getting that beam rotation in order and finding six hit routines will be the major focus for the Huskers (hint, hint Ashley Lambert). But Minnesota/Illinois could be an actual thing. Minnesota started the season abysmally, as could only be expected, but the 196s have started to drop as Lindsay Mable’s everything and Hanna Nordquist’s beam round into form. It’s still a partially formidable group, and if Illinois can’t pull together competitive vault and floor rotations that finally get out of the flat 9.725s, we could see the upset.

As much as I complain about the schedule, I do like that it’s mostly split up by conference. The SEC takes Friday, the Big 10 takes Saturday, and then the Pac-12 brings up the rear. It makes me feel organized and safe. In spite of the Price question mark, Stanford is gradually moving toward six actual competitive routines on each event, which shouldn’t be an accomplishment in February, but it is. The more Vaculik that’s happening, the better. For Cal, beam is becoming a real worry. They are legitimately competitive with the low 196 teams on three events and so exciting to watch in places, but if they can’t put together a hit beam rotation for even a high 48, then none of it really matters.

UCLA is in the Monday slot this week against a resurgent Washington. The Bruins looked thankfully OK last Sunday (99% because of Peng), but this time, hitting 18 floor passes without any landings that remind me of those bird things on people’s desks that drink the water, that would be nice. And bringing back the vaults from week 1 would be good too. But really, Peszek Calf-Gate 2015 is the main story. It’s painful how much weaker their rotations look without her. Be healthy, girl.

Top 25 Schedule

Friday, February 6