The quest for the individual AA title and event titles has never been anywhere in the vicinity of a primary focus during the NCAA gymnastics ALL ABOUT THE TEAM Championship, brought to you by THE CLOSEST GROUP OF SISTERS. Spoiler alert: It’s all about the team. All in. No regrets. Life lesson. Teamwork. Growth. Having each other’s backs.
Individual accolades are the ugly stepsister of college gymnastics, the one who is hidden in the attic and not allowed to come out when guests are around. (You have one of those too, right?) Publicly acknowledging a desire for individual recognition is strictly taboo. I’m just here to help the team succeed. No member of the team is more important than any other. Leader in the training gym.
To reinforce this culture, the coaches elected to do away with Sunday’s individual event finals entirely this season, ostensibly because of the new TV deal that will televise Friday and Saturday’s competitions live, even though…what does that have to do with Sunday? You could still have competition on Sunday, even if it’s not part of the TV broadcast. This has never been explained. Now, the individual event titles will be decided on Friday along with the all-around and the qualification to Super Six, making it, if possible, even more of a crapshoot afterthought parade of nothing than it was before. Remember how Lloimincia Hall never made a floor final in her whole career?
Individual Events
Let’s be honest, the winner of each event title will be whichever gymnast anchors the lineup of the last team competing on that event. You know it. On vault, that would be Gnat in the first session and Bresette in the second session, so we’ll go with Gnat. She would likely be the choice anyway. On bars, that’s Rogers in the first semi and Sternberg in the second, and I have no problem at all picking Rogers to win bars (even though it will probably be Wofford or one of the Floridas, both going in the 5th rotation of their semifinals). On beam, it’s Sloan in the first semi and Capps in the second semi. OOOF. Two very likely nominees to win. We’ll go with Capps. On floor, it’s Atkinson in the first and Hughes in the second. That’s tougher. They’ll both get good scores, but Gnat and McGee are probably the floor favorites.
Still, sticking to my principle that scores are too heavily based on lineup and rotation order and that the winner of each event will simply be the most recent competitor, my official picks are Gnat on vault, Rogers on bars, Capps on beam, and Atkinson on floor. Feel free to submit your own. We’ll all have a good shot of winning because I’m sure there will be a billion ties even with the increased number of judges.
Silver lining: we will no longer have to wait through an interminably long event final because thousands of qualifiers tied for fourth place in a semifinal. Those vault finals some years, when they did two vaults, and had 25 qualifiers…
Plus, what would have been the day of event finals is now the day of the WAG Test Event, so we can still use that to help pretend our lives are full. Romania, you guys. We broke it and it never got fixed.
All-around
The all-around title, also decided on Friday, is usually slightly less random, but only slightly. We all know who the top all-arounders are, and they’ll each be pecking around the top of the standings, but then also sometimes Kim Jacob wins. When the scores are this closely packed, weird things can happen very easily. To break the race down, I’ll run through the gymnasts I see as the most likely winners, so we know it will be none of them. Continue reading National Championship Preview Part 4: Do We Care About Individuals? (Not Really)→
This was really another week for the 9.975 as those continued to sprout up all like weeds, but we did see a few full 10s thrown out as well, one for Lauren Beers for sticking her Y1.5, and another for Nina McGee for doing Nina McGee things on floor.
“Don’t lean, don’t lean, don’t lean, don’t lean.” She had to adjust that stick a little bit.
We’re also closing in on regionals, with most teams two meets and a conference championship away from finalizing RQS, so it’s worth looking at how the regional placements would pan out if the season ended today. And by worth it, I mean fun. For me.
Just to review, regional placements are made using a traditional No Damn Sense seeding process, whereby seeds 1/12/13 go together, as do 2/11/14, 3/10/15, 4/9/16, 5/8/17, and 6/7/18. The 19-36 teams are then placed into pots of 8 and allocated by region as much as possible (usually not very possible). With two teams advancing from each regional, that means the top seed receives the most difficult challenger (#13), and the 6th/7th seeds receive the easiest challenger (#18), often making #6 and #7 the ideal ranking places at which to finish the season. Why yes, that is stupid. Welcome. You’ll like it here.
The regional hosts this year are Georgia, Utah, Alabama, Michigan, Minnesota, and Iowa, which means if we placed teams in their normal seeding spots right now, we would have host conflicts with Alabama and Georgia ending up in the same one, and Michigan and Iowa ending up in the same one. When that happens, the placements are adjusted slightly, usually one spot, to avoid the conflict, so I’ve done that in the prospective placement below, flip-flopping Georgia with Boise State and Iowa with Stanford, which is the path of least resistance to get everything to work out. This will obviously change in the coming weeks, but it’s a sense of how things could look. There are some juicy matchup possibilities to get excited about.
Oklahoma broke 198 and recorded another season high over the weekend on the quest to beat last season’s program-record 197.895 RQS. Still a few mid-197s to drop to make that happen. The Sooners did lose the #1 vault ranking to LSU this week, and while still great, that is an area where the landings will need to come into line as we get closer to things mattering. Even in this week’s 198, it was a hop-fest until Ali Jackson saved the earth with her stuck 1.5. We also saw a huge discrepancy in Oklahoma’s floor scores at home this week compared to away at Georgia last week. Now, the performance was also clearly better this week, but the postseason truth is going to be somewhere in between. It will be interesting to watch those floor scores @ UCLA in a couple weeks, because it’s an away meet but also one known for getting a little fancy with the floor scores. It still should let us know how much of a 9.9 fest that floor rotation could be in April.
Florida will view losing to LSU at home as distinctly not cool in spite of the glitter-factory of 9.9s, largely a function of Sloan having another bad meet with a fall on beam and an OOB on floor. She has been through patches like this in her NCAA career before, two seasons ago suffering a streak of beam misses in the postseason until she put up probably her best ever in Super Six. If Sloan hits 4-for-4 last Friday, Florida wins that meet and passes 198 in the process. The positive development was the introduction of McMurtry on floor, silly score notwithstanding. Floor had been the biggest question for the Gators, and if she’s able to go consistently when it matters, that lineup becomes much more competitive and much less at the mercy of the depth monster. 3. Alabama – 197.325
197.550 is the highest score of the season so far for Alabama, in spite of the performance honestly being just OK. That’s an encouraging sign for the team’s ultimate scoring potential, though when we balance some heavy senior-night scoring like for Beers (particularly on floor) with a beam rotation far below the team’s capability, the score ends up being pretty representative of where Alabama is right now. There’s just one meet left before SECs, so we’re getting to now-or-never in terms of who’s actually in these lineups. How many events is Winston doing/able to do? She probably should be AAing. Alabama’s scores are very tightly bunched, so there’s no chance to pass Florida at the moment, but given the stupidity of the placement system, who even cares really?
Also note that Kiana Winston did two events and got 9.975 on both. Lauren Beers did two events and got 10.000 and 9.975.
LSU needed a big road score this week, and boy did that happen with a 197.900. Oh, going to Florida. The Tigers picked up two full points in RQS total (so 0.400 in RQS average), skyrocketing to a much more appropriate ranking for their quality. This team certainly should be breaking 197 every meet now, so we can expect a continued RQS ascent as these 196s are dropped. It will be tough for LSU to pass Alabama this week, but it is possible. Encouragingly, beam is starting to pull itself together and look how LSU beam is supposed to look in 2016, while in spite of scoring close to a season-high on bars, the lack of easy 9.9s there remains the primary sticking point.
Michigan drops a place this week but maintains relative pace after recording a crucial road high at Oklahoma. It was not an ideal performance, with Artz having a meh by her standards and beam looking tight, tight, tight following last week’s meltdown (but five hits are five hits). Michigan is still theoretically capable of passing LSU this coming weekend with a season high, but LSU’s bold scores are significantly higher than Michigan’s so finishing the regular season higher than 5th looks unlikely at this point. But at this point in the season, 197.275 for a 7/10 meet is where Michigan should be.
Five straight weeks scoring between 197.025 and 197.150. Consistency! Utah will be in the race to pass Michigan following this Friday’s meeting between the two teams, but because the Utes’ scores are also tightly bunched, it will be difficult to move higher before regionals unless the scores really start exploding immediately. Being relatively undermanned at Cal over the weekend, Utah will take that performance, but it was still a little too one-9.9-per-event to make the Utes look like a sure Super Six team. Utah needs a breakout score, and I think most of us are expecting that meet to be March 12th at home against Georgia.
UCLA has fallen into a 196.6 rut, scores that aren’t going to threaten anyone. Given the lineups this weekend, without the use of Francis, Peng, and Cipra, and with Ohashi on just one event, an average score had to be expected. It was like Depth Exploration Episode II and is therefore not a great indicator of where the team really is, though it did serve to illuminate that the vault lineup is Code Blue. It’s not like there were auto-9.9s resting this week who are going to bring the score up. We should still expect much better at next week’s tri-meet against Georgia and Stanford, though the Bruins will not be able to move up any higher in the rankings, now suddenly having to worry about Auburn as well.
The second Engler and Phillips got injured, Auburn turned good. Sorry, ladies. The team is still not reaching the level of last year’s squad, particularly with a beam rotation that’s devastatingly Walker-less and a vault rotation without depth or margin for error (Abby Milliet time?), but at this point the Tigers are once again setting themselves up as the most realistic spoiler choice if one of the big names has a meltdown. With a 196.175 road score still to get rid of, and heading to Georgia this Friday, Auburn can increase RQS pretty significantly and will be looking at UCLA like Sylvester at Tweety.
Arkansas broke the all-important 197 barrier at home over the weekend when Wellick finally started getting her 9.9s, as did everyone else. Suddenly. Look how that worked out. The Razorbacks head to Missouri this weekend, so there’s every reason to expect another big score given what we’ve seen so far this year. The margin between Arkansas and Auburn is too great to overcome in one week, but to have any chance, one of those 196.150s needs to be obliterated by a point. Auburn is starting to pull away in the race for the evening session at SECs, but it’s not quite over yet. 10. Georgia – 196.375
The worst part is that the Gymdogs counted falls on both bars and beam to score a 195.675 this weekend, and their RQS went up. Because that was still better than the score they were previously counting. I’m hoping we can ignore the bars issue as a one-off thing. Rogers does have a high-risk routine, so falls will happen occasionally, but Vaculik’s mistake was weird, and I wouldn’t expect it to be repeated. On beam, there’s nothing new to say. Falls, fall, falls. Falls that overshadow the fact that progress is being made, with Babalis and Rogers both showing their best beam routines of the season. But there’s no consistency in progress or performance, so do we expect Babalis and Rogers to continue on that path this next week? Not at all.
It’s a huge weekend for Georgia, home against Auburn on Friday and then away to UCLA on Sunday, because why are you doing that to yourselves? Extra meets give Georgia more chances to break the cycle, but if they can’t emerge from this weekend as the 197 team we saw that glimpse of once, will it ever happen? 11. Boise State – 196.330
These are some serious scores, and this is the most evenly competitive team Cal has ever put together. My biggest takeaway from the meet against Utah was the absence of any weak links. No one is filling out lineups with a 9.725 that everyone wants to drop. Cal’s postseason viability, however, will be determined by the final two meets before regionals, away at Sac State and then Pac-12 champs, both because of the need to drop those 195s to maintain this relative ranking position and because of the need to prove that these high 196s with 9.800-9.825 base scores aren’t just a home thing or a “compared to Arizona State” thing.
Do we know what’s going to happen with Toni-Ann and the test event if Cal actually makes nationals?
Lo, we arrive at the most interesting portion of the rankings right now. It’s always fun to watch how things play out at the top, but whether a team finishes #3 or #5 doesn’t really matter all the much. What matters the most when it comes to regionals is where the likes of Nebraska and Stanford finish and who gets stuck with them. It’s no longer a sure thing that they’ll move up, meaning we’re going to have a lot of nervous #2 teams as we get down to it.
Nebraska went full Nebraska and had just seven gymnasts over the weekend, one again using just five on vault and floor. There are some big potential scores on this team from Blanske, Williams, Lambert when she’s healthy (never), and now Breen who has emerged as a vital AAer this season. Right now, the lack of depth of scores makes it hard to pick Nebraska to make regionals, but get Lambert back on vault and floor and get Laeng back from her elbow injury at just the right time, and this becomes a 197 team.
Stanford dropped spots because this week’s meet is not until tonight, but unless tonight is a big score and ushers in a conversion to Postseason Stanford, two good teams are going to get stuck with Stanford at a regional.
Iowa heads to Iowa State on Friday, and with a season high, would be able to drop that 194.900 like no one’s business to reach an RQS of 196.330. That’s where Boise State currently sits in 11th. This year’s mid-196 threats are many and frequent.
The race for the evening session at Pac-12s is suddenly a thing, with Arizona finally dropping some nasty road scores and temporarily jumping ahead of Oregon State. Like Iowa, Arizona still has a nasty score to get rid of, so we could see another jump, perhaps even to challenge Stanford if things don’t go well tonight. Stanford/Oregon State tonight has serious Pac-12 Champs implications.
With an extra meet left, tonight’s performance for Oregon State is not quite as urgent as it is for Stanford, but it’s about to be March, and those are still three 195s, and this ranking is still #20.
George Washington is coming off a two-meet weekend that went 1-for-2. Counting an 8.9 on bars took away the score on Friday, but then GWU came home on Sunday and learned what it feels like to experience the warm glowing glow of attention and mid-196s.
The champion of the week was Ashleigh Gnat, who recorded the first vault 10 of the new vault era by sticking her DTY. Because that’s what happens when you stick DTYs. You get 10s. Do I hear an Amanar? Sorry. I’ll stop. OMG YOU GUYS, my aunt’s cousin’s best enemy’s roommate totally saw Ashleigh Gnat training an Amanar. I SWEAR.
“Oh snap, she stuck it!” Oh Sac, never leave us ever. What if KJC said “Oh snap” when someone landed a vault? I’ll let you go enjoy your made life.
-Florida retains the #1 ranking after a fine-not-great showing at Auburn, a score brought down by some discomfort/Bridget Sloan improvisation on beam that had not been a factor in earlier performances, along with the continued half-a-floor-lineup situation. Oklahoma gained ground in the rankings after putting up a much more Oklahoma-January type performance, still having to endure one beam fall but without the total number of mistakes that kept the first couple meets in more pedestrian territory.
-The emergence of Natalie Von Lovelyton has been a pleasant develop in the reconstruction of Oklahoma’s lineups this season, with her pretty, twisty routines characteristic of the early-KJ Oklahoma era. Brown has a front 2/1 on floor, an E pass but not a double salto E pass, though I’ve noticed that overall the Sooners are going much simpler than their capability on floor, aside from Scaman. Jackson, Jones, and Capps sometimes are all more than capable of big double-salto E passes, but they haven’t been bringing the big. At least not yet. That’s even more true for UCLA’s lineup, which is a march of the double pikes until Bynum in the anchor spot. It will be interesting to watch when or if the in-your-face difficulty is reintroduced to some of these routines, or if these coaches just decide to say, “Hey, this is what we can do cleanly, and we don’t need to do more. Over the last two or three years, clean, amplitudinous double pike routines have received 9.950s and even 10.000s in anchor spots, so…..deal with it.”
-When I said in December that this would be the season of beam, I meant it in a good way. I really did. There’s so much pretty happening on beam this year, just right now it tends to be happening in a windstorm and on the ground.
-Georgia. Good improvement? Coming off of last weekend’s four falls, Georgia recorded three falls and a missed connection this time, so it’s way better and everything’s fine. We’re number 43! We’re number 43! Brandie Jay is their rock, so that’s where Georgia’s beam is. It’s officially a balance beam situation. At this point, the gymnasts are already displaying a level of terror that can only be described as “our coach just decided that we’re going to try to take a bus across Pennsylvania in the middle of a blizzard,” so it’s only going to get worse after this latest showing.
-It’s the first sign of the inevitable and oncoming beam revolt during which the beams will rise up and battle the humans for the future of the planet in a laser war. As part of this opening salvo, one beam also stole Avery Rickett’s foot and forced Alabama to count two falls, taking away what looked like an easy 197, and another comrade tried to pop a cap at Katelyn Ohashi as she double piked to her neck following a misguided round off. UCLA did not have to endure the same level of beam catastrophe (because the world is upside down) as Ohashi got to go again due to equipment malfunction. Which it did. That’s what happens when you’re relying on the structural integrity of only the cap to keep you on the beam. Somehow, she was able to be not in a thousand pieces after that landing and did go again, hitting the double pike this time and recording a 9.825.
-Through three weeks, the current top four teams have not had to count a fall, in some cases more surprising than others. I joke about UCLA, but having a solid and clear six beamers this year without the need to mix and match and rearrange seems to be doing the trick so far. That’s already a postseason lineup, just needing to straighten up a couple ragged edges and Sophina dismounts here and there. Michigan is a 196.9 machine, just sneaking up to that plateau for the 4th consecutive week after petitioning some beam scores at the last minute. Four straight 196.9s is kind of insane but also emblematic of the even-steven nature of this team in 2015 and now 2016. Michigan is the least susceptible to wild variations in performance from meet to meet. What you expect is what you get, which is much less heart-attacky than what we got used to during those couple seasons right after the Botterman era. Wolverine fans have earned this.
-While everyone else is having a balance beam situation, Utah is having a floor exercise situation. Someone should start that blog. Utah’s high on floor is a 49.025 right now. And yes, that whole lineup graduated after last season, but the remaining floor workers are much more talented than the performances they have been throwing out there, especially Lee and Lewis who should be hitting us over the head with 9.875-9.900s every time. What’s even going on around here?
-Nina McGee has a 10 and a 9.975 on floor so far this season. Amazing what happens when people suddenly start paying attention to the huge routines you’ve been doing for three years.
-Stanford got a 196.675 over the weekend. Didn’t someone tell them that it’s still only January? Ladies, you’re not supposed to get good scores until March. At the earliest. What is this?
