Following the look at the SEC‘s movers and shakers in the roster department, let’s check in with the Pac-12, where we have a few teams with some pretty major turnover from last year’s postseason lineups.

It’s a very manageable number of routines that Utah has to replace, with 21 of 24 sets from the national championship returning, though there is the crucial Soloski floor 9.950 that will need to come from somewhere else this time around. The first-year class is small, but it does include Makenna Smith, whose L10 work gives some Merrell-Giles vibes overall and is mostly here to shore up a semi-depleted vault lineup with her Omelianchik. Most significant in Utah’s quest not to drop tenths from last season, however, will be getting solid mid-lineup routines from transfer Abby Brenner on all three of her apparatuses, as well as more events from Kara Eaker in a healthy season, even though they got her main one—beam—when it mattered in 2022.

Cal has a task ahead of itself in trying to make up for just how many absolutely essential routines are not on the squad anymore—though did have some practice for it last season what with George being injured, and Watterson being out on bars, and Schank getting hurt toward the end. Cal ends up having to replace 9 of the 24 routines from the regional final, which is a lot, but not an entire team. Which it could have been. The path to keeping up a top-10+ level this season primarily includes a starring role for 9.950s on multiple events from eMjae Frazier, but also requires a major contribution from all-around possibilities Miki Aderinto and Georgia-Rose Casey Brown, the ninja L10s who both had extremely successful championship seasons this year across the events.

UCLA is also losing a fair chunk of important quality with 7-9 of their best-lineup routines from last season departing (depending on who was available that day), but this remains a roster that has more than enough pieces and more than enough talent to be a top-4 team. Just like it was theoretically last year. Selena Harris comes in as one of the best L10 athletes in the country and Ciena Alipio should be a beam + TBD others type, which starts to make up for last season’s losses pretty well. Still, UCLA will need more than that to get back to where they should be, so they’ll also be looking for an Emily Lee season as well as generally more comfort and consistency from the sophomores, which remains one of the most talented classes in UCLA history but hasn’t fully delivered on that yet.

Everyone has their fiercest opera glasses out to see what Stanford gets up to because here we have a team that majorly outperformed expectations last year to finish 14th after basically not even having a season the year before, has also lost a ton of its most important routines from 2022 (including 11 of the 24 routines from the regional final), but then also has one of the most interesting and potentially influential first-year classes in the country. This is a first-year class that could make up for all 11 lost routines, what with Roberts, Dean, and Nguyen being top L10s and Sorrento coming in to Canada all about. But the pressure will be on them to hit the ground running because looking only at what Stanford got from the sophomore-junior-senior gymnasts last year, the team would be very light. 

Oregon State will certainly miss Kaitlyn Yanish (and the team’s main score-replacement concern will be that floor routine), but last year’s departures hardly constitute an excessive loss of routines for this young team—and having Madi Dagen back for another year is critical for continuing the upward trajectory started last season. While bars showed a few more signs of life in 2022, it was still OSU’s rough event, and this year’s first-year class represents an extreme case of recruiting for the weakness. This is a deeply bars class that should revamp that lineup.

Somewhat similarly to Oregon State, Washington has lost a gymnast who was a critical piece through good times and bad in Geneva Thompson but is not losing enough routines to need to do a full rebuild of the path established last season. We actually haven’t seen Washington bring in a new class with this many sheer numbers, possible routines, and warm bodies in a good while, so that bodes fairly well for their chances to construct some more competitive routines, especially if last season’s drastic improvements from returning gymnasts were any indication.

Arizona State will like its chances for upgrade in 2023 since the routine losses from last season are pretty minimal (21 of 24 routines from regionals return), and there are a few injury returns that would almost entirely mitigate that loss even before the first-year class is factored in with the potential all-around contribution from Kimberly Smith.

Arizona loses the fewest routines of any team in the Pac-12, just a single bars set from last year’s regionals lineup, which is exactly what they needed after finishing last in the conference. The 2023 season should be almost entirely about adding and very little about subtracting as Arizona tries to close the gap on the rest of the teams.

We’re slightly more than a month out from the season now, so it’s a good time to familiarize ourselves (and by ourselves I mean me) with what has changed on each team since the last time we saw them back in April. Do they have a new haircut? A weird boyfriend? A sudden baby? All of the above? 

Florida has lost exactly 1/3 of its routines from the national championship last year, including half the floor lineup. It’s a significant enough exodus that on pure graduation-to-first-year turnover, Florida is losing routines. Kayla DiCello isn’t three people. But when you add DiCello’s all-around to the injury returns of Morgan Hurd and Ellie Lazzari, as well as the Georgia transfers Victoria Nguyen and Baumann The Younger, Florida will hope to have enough to keep pace with the lost routines. Baumann and Nguyen will not be called upon to compete as much for Florida as they did for Georgia, but they should contend for plenty of lineups. Especially given the leg-injury history on this roster, Baumann’s floor looks particularly useful.

Drew Watson is the major loss from last season, but other than that, Auburn has Suni locked in for a second and final year and will return 22 of 24 routines from the national championship. With first-year standout Olivia Greaves already sidelined for the season, there’s very little lineup turnover expected here.

Missouri’s only roster loss from last season is the transfer of Gatzendorfer to Maryland, and since she was not in final lineups, all 24 of Missouri’s postseason routines from 2022 return. So, again, we’re going to see quite a bit of lineup consistency between 2022 and 2023 for a team that had its best year ever in 2022. So why not? Missouri’s top first-year gymnast this season is Addison Lawrence from GAGE who took 3rd on floor in Senior F at L10 nationals in the spring and also brings the potential for a Y1.5.

First off, Alabama has some important routines to replace this year, especially on vault and floor, with a few of the top options Lexi Grabers going bye bye. But there is the opportunity here for even more changeover than what is absolutely required with a first-year class that has the new most people capable of contributing real-life lineup routines of any team in the top 20-ish, led by Karis German and Gabby Gladieux (who won Senior D this year), both of whom we should expect to see a lot. Those returning gymnasts who are 4th, 5th, 6th on events may be pushed out by shinier new toys.

Like Alabama, Kentucky has also lost exactly 1/4 of its final lineups from last season, which means every lineup is going to feel at least a bit of a pinch. Kentucky will expect to get events here and there from the first-year class to rebuild each six (they’ll want to see Bourque in several lineups), though the most important addition may be getting Bailey Bunn back from injury. 

Arkansas has lost among the most routines of anyone in the conference with 9 of 24 (37.5%) lineup sets from the regional final no longer with the team. That’s a big reason the transfer of Norah Flatley could end up being so important for Arkansas. She showed last season with UCLA that she still has top-level all-around, and Arkansas needs routines from her and Frankie Price returning from injury—in addition to the potential bars reset to be delivered by first-year AA contenders Pratt and Swaney—to envision improvement over 2022’s finish.

LSU is among the teams that could be in danger of losing more than it is gaining this year because of how many different 1-2 event necessities graduated after last season. At the same time, the baseline replacement of 6/24 postseason routines is about what you expect to have to do each year and should be manageable. Bryce Wilson has been one of the top VT/FX gymnasts in the Devo/Nastia Cup world for years, Cammy Hall is coming in to vault, and LSU will also want to get at least a bars routine from Ashley Cowan (she’s also a lovely twister on floor) and will hope that Annie Beard can overcome her Texas Dreams injury heritage to at least provide a lineup beam, if not also have a Grace Quinn-type career floor trajectory.  

That large boom you heard in the background was the sound of Kupets blowing up last year’s roster and starting from scratch. You can’t say she didn’t go to work after surviving the axe. No team will look more different in 2023 than Georgia, with 16 of the 24 routines from regionals last year now gone. The parade of newcomers is in some respects a case of trying to throw walk-ons at the problem to see if a routine or two sticks (and there should be at least a couple), but JaFree Scott could be a game changer for this team in terms of Georgia actually getting one of the nation’s most exciting recruits again. Plus, the transfers will be critical. Josie Angeny is even more essential on all her events now than she was for Kentucky, but I’m most interested to see what happens with Vanessa Deniz in a different…team-depth environment. There were definitely times when she was sitting on the bench casually 9.850ing to herself just because that wasn’t making the Oklahoma lineup, but Georgia would kill for it. 

OK, enough of that elite slop. The time has come to transition fully to NCAA (preview) season, beginning with a look at some of this year’s marquee events that will soon bestow themselves upon us for us to pick apart like harpies. As always, you can view the complete season schedule for all the teams in the menu at the top. Or just…here.

Opening weekend

• The 2023 season begins on Friday, January 6th, an opening day headlined by LSU @ Utah—what we can presume will be the first top-10 matchup of the year unless the coaches poll decides to take LSU’s finishing position last season deeply literally. Coming off that disappointing regional semifinal exit and having now graduated the Super Specialist class (Edwards, Durante, Desiderio, Dean, Campbell), LSU will be aiming toward a rebirth in these early meets and isn’t starting with an easy one.
• Michigan State @ Alabama is also slated for the first day, and she’s a lot. After deciding that the duck was not in fact worth, Alabama has a new head coach this season along with probably the deepest first-year class of any of the top teams, so eyes will be on the Tide early in the year to play Spot the Difference. Meanwhile, Michigan State broke through in a big way last season, thanks to ninja L10s Skyla Schulte and Gabrielle Stephen, and this year has added Senior-E champion Nikki Smith and Senior-D runner-up Olivia Zsarmani to the team in a realistic bid to be even more competitive with the major players.
• So…this Las Vegas House of Mysteries? If you heard tell as of the national championship last April, the 2023 season was supposed to begin with an 868-team cavalcade of stars in Vegas residency for the greatest show on earth. As we stand now, a little more than a month out from the season, we have 16 teams reserved on RTN’s schedule (including Oklahoma, Michigan, Auburn, UCLA, Cal, etc etc etc), an empty Collegiate Challenge website, and no official announcement of a meet. So let’s get on that. Ladies, what are we doing?

New program debuts

• We have three new teams in college gymnastics this season (bringing us back up to 84) with Fisk, Simpson, and Greenville joining the circus. It’s always interesting to see just where new programs settle in the hierarchy and how well they’ve been able to put together a complete team for the first meet. Fisk is supposed to start off at the Vegas House of Mysteries (or, if not, at Michigan the following Friday), while Simpson opens by visiting Hamline, and Greenville starts off with a tough-but-high-profile one against Ohio State, both on January 8th.

Big ol’ meets

• The annual Best of Utah competition on Friday of week 2 has now added a Foreigners Day (aka the Wasatch Classic) on Saturday, January 14, in which distinctly non-Utah teams are also invited to the party as long as they behave themselves. Minnesota, UCLA, Washington, and Boise State go that afternoon, while Cal, Iowa, Oregon State, and Pitt compete at night. For Cal, UCLA, Washington, and Oregon State, this is an opportunity for an early-season competition at what will be the host arena of Pac-12s for the foreseeable ever.
  
• Not to be outdone, LSU has added its own hosted-away-meet on podium—the Purple & Gold Classic—in Baton Rouge on March 3rd, where Cal, Washington, and George Washington will come to town.
• Metroplex—the “we love our Texas recruitsssss” special—is also up to 2 separate sessions this year on Saturday, February 11, with Utah and Georgia headlining the day session and Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, and Stanford going at night.
• This year’s Big Five meets—the Big Ten conference’s little mini practice conference championships—will head to Long Island for some reason, with Michigan, Iowa, Illinois, Maryland, and Penn State competing on the night of February 24, and Minnesota, Michigan State, Ohio State, Nebraska, and Rutgers going in the day on February 25.

A television????

• Pretty much all of this season’s biggest dual meets will be getting the ESPN Family treatment, with Utah @ Oklahoma on January 22nd crowned as the belle of the ball on Big ESPN.
• For ESPN2 meets, there is that LSU/Utah clash on the first weekend, then a doubleheader on January 13 with LSU @ Kentucky followed by Auburn @ Florida—which I guess is now the headlining SEC regular season dual since those were the two SEC schools to make the championship last year. ESPN2 has also snatched three of the other most anticipated meets of the year—UCLA @ Utah on February 3, Florida @ LSU on February 17, and Florida @ Oklahoma on March 3. Which this means you might be able to watch at least two whole Oklahoma home meets this year. It’s a brand new world.
• Three meets will also jump to ESPNU: Florida @ Alabama on January 20, Minnesota @ Michigan on February 10 and Oklahoma @ Michigan on March 6.
• Among the year’s biggest regular season meets, really only the Oklahoma @ LSU meet on Monday, January 16 is currently relegated to SEC+ subscription land.

Championship season

• The behemoth conference championship day is set for Saturday, March 18, and nothing has been done this year to spread that out or make it at all watchable, but we do have some adjustments to the regional schedule to make that quite a bit more user-friendly.
• The UCLA and Oklahoma regionals will have their play-ins on Wednesday, March 29, regional semifinals on Thursday, March 30, and regional finals on Saturday, April 1, while the Denver and Pittsburgh regionals will have their play-ins on Thursday, March 30, their semifinals on Friday, March 31, and their finals on Sunday, April 2. This new schedule (and the actual division of each of the four regionals into four separate time zones) should mean that none of the regional semifinals or regional finals run at the same time as any other meet. The only overlap at all looks like it would be on Thursday March 30, when the play-in from the Denver regional will clash with the first semifinal from the UCLA regional, but we can live with that.
• The national semifinals are once again on ESPN2 on Thursday, April 13, while the final will be on ABC on Saturday, April 15. The championship meet times are slightly different than they were last year, with the semifinals at 3pm ET/12pm PT and 9pm ET/6pm PT, and the final at 4pm ET/1pm PT.