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.
The big news of the week came in the land of commitments with Kyla Ross announcing that she is going to UCLA. This is an upset. We so rarely get upsets. Until very recently, all we had heard for years was "Stanford, Stanford, Stanford, Stanford." Looks like Miss Val went to work. Next mission: Let's work on not throwing up all those sloppy 9.6s on bars.
UCLA is shaping up to have something on the verge of a post-2000 class after the 2016 Olympics. There will be a couple years where Biles, Ross, Ohashi, Dennis, and Kocian will all be on the team at the same time (and in 2017, we could see a beam lineup with Peng, Ross, Biles, and Ohashi all together, stop thinking about it, stop thinking about it, stop jinxing it). The judges will be exploding in a shower of confetti over how many 10s they want to give them. Time to start getting everyone fitted for bubble-wrap body suits. No UCLA injury parades, please.
In actual competition this week, Utah returned to its home ways, winning the weekend with a 198.050, the fourth-best score in team history, featuring another 10 on bars for Georgia Dabritz. It's funny that bars has turned out to be Dabritz's 10 event, because I still sort of think it's her third-best event. I prefer watching her on vault and floor, though the comaneci makes it so much better. A couple other routines I saw this weekend could realistically have received 10s and I only would have complained about it a medium amount, notably both Kayla Williams and Alex McMurtry on vault, especially compared to the other scores given out at those meets.
Interestingly, the scores are going very high, especially in the big-name meets with all kinds of 9.950s flying out of every orifice. But at the same time, the 10 pace has fallen off a little bit, as though there's some timidity about giving out ALL THE 10s creeping in, but not about giving everyone 9.950s.
Oklahoma just escaped Michigan over the weekend. Just. That would have been a bit of a wake-up call, wouldn't it? Lower-than-expected scores on both beam and floor accounted for Oklahoma spending a second straight week in the lower half of the 197s, after it seemed like they would never deign to score under a 197.500 given the early-season performances. 197.3 is what peasants score. Floor hasn't been a problem for most of the year (Kara Lovan had a 9.450 disaster this time but is pretty much always a clean little broomstick of twisting for 9.900), but once again beam was the lowest-scoring event. It will be fine, and will be beautiful, but it's definitely true that they have not been able to replace the Spears and Mooring routines with as reliable work.
In spite of the big scores from LSU and Utah over the weekend, Oklahoma's RQS lead is still quite comfortable. It should remain comfortable in the near future given the road score advantage they maintain over all the other teams, as long as they can get rid of this 197.3 with a juicy 197.800 soon.
2. LSU – 197.335 Week 7: 197.950 Week 7 leaders: AA - Courville 39.625; VT - Courville, Ewing 9.900; UB - Courville 9.950; BB - Jordan 9.925; FX - Hall 9.975
This was a big home win over Florida. Very big. While LSU has been firmly in the title conversation since before the season started, they've been very clearly the third team in the hierarchy of the three big contenders. Victories like this (I struggle to call it an upset since they were at home, even though it was a ranking and reputation upset) help even the outlook. LSU hit a very composed and consistent meet and was the stronger team, but this was not their best gymnastics. Beam was more nervy than it has been in other meets, and the vault landings can be much more controlled. And Courville's floor still has some random issue almost every time. Still, LSU confirmed that there is no real quality-of-gymnastics gap between them and the other title contenders. They are capable of beating a hit meet from any other team. They won't necessarily need to hope for errors once Nationals come around.
The Tigers still trail Oklahoma by three tenths in the RQS battle, but they are going to Alabama next weekend with a golden chance to get rid of that mid-196 road score and pick up at least a couple tenths, which would put the pressure on the Sooners. They can't catch Oklahoma yet, but they can make it competitive.
Of note, Ashleigh Gnat had verging on the best performances I've seen from her on all of her events.
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – UC Davis @ San Jose State (Scores) (Stream)
Week 6 rankings.
It's a big day in the SEC. Place your bets now on the high score of the day. I'm going with 207.650. Kytra Hunter is definitely getting a 13 on floor tonight.
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?
Over the weekend, Florida recovered from their average road performance a week ago to record the season's highest total so far, 198.225, which means the Gators jump right back up into their cozy little trio with Oklahoma and LSU. Ah, home meets. It's a wonder what home+Baker+Hunter hitting can do for scores.
In 10-land, the pace dropped off a little bit this week with just one 10.0 instead of the usual 6,000. The one 10.0 came from Toni-Ann Williams, Her Ladyship Duchess of Berkeley, on vault. It's particularly significant because it's the first 10.0 for Cal on vault ever. We also had several more 9.975s on bars, including Ivana Hong, because obviously, as well as Mary Jane Horth once again.
If you haven't had a chance to watch the LSU/Auburn meet from Friday yet, you really should. High-quality gymnastics in a competitive meet that went down to the final routine and was not defined by judging insanity (almost entirely). It was a good reminder of what's fun about college gymnastics. I have to think that if Caitlin Atkinson had been in on floor, Auburn would have won. Scores were going in Auburn's favor through that final rotation, but Hlawek had to perform in the final spot and just doesn't have that 9.900 routine they needed.
In the comment of the live blog, a few people mentioned that it would be interesting if Auburn keeps this up and knocks Georgia out of the top-seeded session at SECs (it really would be). But, Georgia is the de facto host of SECs, and do we know if the SEC is mimicking the rules of the Pac-12, where the host school's session goes in the evening regardless of seeding? Last year, if you recall, the Pac-12 Championship was at Cal. Since Cal was not in the top four in the conference, the top four seeds went in the afternoon and then the bottom four seeds went in the evening, and it was weird.
That's among the reasons I was pleased to hear that the Pac-12 Championship has been moved from ASU to Utah this year. We know Utah is going to be one of the top four seeds. Plus, they'll put on a good event. But also, come on people. Planning! Shouldn't this have been worked out, maybe, 8 months ago?
Moving onto the rankings, we're just one week out of RQS kicking in, so I've included the current RQS picture for each team along with their season average ranking.
Refresher: RQS stands for Regional Qualifying Score. It determines which 36 teams will advance to the Regional Championships and is calculated by taking a team's top six scores, of which at least three must be road scores, removing the highest score, and averaging the remaining five.
Week 6 Rankings - (GymInfo) 1. Oklahoma – 197.536 Week 6: 197.275 Week 6 leaders: AA - None; VT - Capps 9.950; UB - Wofford 9.925; BB - Capps, Clark 9.850; FX - Scaman, Jackson 9.925
*Scores in bold are guaranteed to be part of the six RQS scores.
In spite of a, perhaps, unexpectedly meh showing over the weekend in which the Sooners were forced to look at the scoreboard and see all these weird 9.8-looking shapes that they didn't recognize, Oklahoma is already set for the postseason when it comes to scores. There aren't really any weak scores that need to be dropped, though they'll surely get rid of that lowly 197 at some point (or every point) over the next five weeks, which will put them in a solid position to eclipse their RQS total from last season of 197.775. The problem is going to be catching them. Florida and LSU basically have to go mid-197 in every remaining meet to have a chance to see the year-end #1. An almost five-tenths advantage in RQS is tough to make up.
There's still some work to do on those road scores. That's where Oklahoma's advantage is the most extreme. Florida still has three road meets left, but the meet this weekend at LSU takes on slightly more significance since ideally they wouldn't be counting any of the road scores they have put up so far. Of course, it doesn't really matter if they finish the regular season #1, #2, #3, etc., but it's a bragging rights thing, and perhaps there's an argument for receiving "pre-ordained winner" scoring once Nationals comes along. The Sloan comeback talk is starting to ramp up, and if she is able to get back on a couple events relatively soon, don't expect that 198 to be lonely for long.
3. LSU – 197.321 Week 6: 197.350 Week 6 leaders: AA - Gnat 39.550; VT - Courville 9.950; UB - Courville 9.925; BB - Jordan 9.925; FX - Gnat 9.950
In spite of falling behind Florida in average, LSU retains a slight lead in the RQS race. They have the advantage on Florida when it comes to those all-important road scores, and they'll look to get rid of that straggling 196.600 when they go on the road to Alabama on the 27th, so expect the Tigers to start closing the Oklahoma gap with a hit meet. They could pick up a couple tenths with a mid-197. Over the weekend, LSU put up a good performance, even though we've come to think of lowish 197s as just average scores for top teams, lowish 197s are not all created equal, and this was a solid one. Still, they certainly let Auburn into the meet, which they probably shouldn't have done. The main culprit was mistakes on floor, with Hall, Courville, and Savona all having some unexpected landing issues to put them in pedestrian 49.250 territory.
8:30 ET/5:30 PT – Boise State @ Alabama (Scores) (ESPN3)
8:30 ET/5:30 PT – Chicago Style (Iowa State, Northern Illinois, Yale)
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – Southern Utah @ BYU (Scores) (BYUtv)
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – Oregon State @ Cal (Scores)
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – San Jose State @ Sacramento State (Scores) (Stream)
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – Seattle Pacific @ UC Davis (Scores)
Week 5 rankings:
Oklahoma's RQS is already 197.465, with a good chance to go much higher today since that RQS includes a 196.500. I love that they could just put up the football team on every event for the rest of the regular season and still be a #1 seed at Regionals. And by love, I mean think that's maybe a problem. It's almost that time of year where I get to start my usual ranting about how RQS should include more meets.
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.
The 198 barrier is a thing of the past. That's what we learned this weekend. Remember in 2012 when UCLA hit 198 and it was a thing? People fainted with outrage about it. There was an epidemic of vapors. It was a different time. Mattie Larson got a 9.900 on bars at that meet, to illustrate what a different time it was.
This weekend, Oklahoma and LSU took 198's fragile innocence, with a 198.150 from Oklahoma and a 198.075 from LSU. Not surprising that those two were the first to do it. What is more surprising is how close Utah has come the last couple weeks, and how high they have risen in the rankings.
Speaking of Utah's scores, in spite of this being a huge-scoring weekend, we saw just two 10.0s, which is sort of low based on my expectations, both from Utah on vault. Once again, we saw lots more 10s from individual judges, including for this fab 9.975 from Mary Jane Horth.
As for the 10s, we need to have an honest conversation about how Tory Wilson didn't stick that vault. Let's just all acknowledge it and move on. After that score, Georgia Dabritz better get a 10 for sticking that excellent 1.5. If Wilson got a 10 and then Dabritz didn't, just throw out the whole system.
Oklahoma maintains a comfortable lead after recording the weekend's highest score yet again. In the Friday live blog I mentioned that Oklahoma had the highest average ever recorded and that point in the season, and unsurprisingly after a 198, that is still true this week. When RQS officially debuts in two weeks, the Sooners have a pretty good shot of starting with a higher RQS than they finished last year. UCLA's record RQS of 198.055 may still be a tough ask, but we'll see.
This team is certainly capable of getting big scores from every spot in the lineup, including the first. Having that 9.925 from Clark in the first spot on bars, and starting with a 9.850 on beam, were critical in allowing Oklahoma to build from there and reach up into the 49.5s on those events, to match what they have been doing regularly on vault and floor. That big score from Clark meant Dowell could take an extra swing after Church, and no one even noticed. Sign of a championship team: your star makes a mistake, and you still get a 49.525.
Not to be overshadowed, LSU was not too shabby this weekend either. It was clear that things got a little silly with the scoring for LSU in that meet, especially toward the end on floor, but the big story was the exceptional beam rotation. With the lovely work from Hambrick and Macadaeg introduced this year, LSU is capable of being anyone on beam now, even Oklahoma (gasp!), but until this week, they had not actually shown that in competition. On Friday, we finally saw it, which is especially remarkable because Jessie Jordan wasn't available. Get back immediately. We're nothing without Jessie Jordan. When that beam lineup is Ewing, Hambrick, Gnat, Macadaeg, Courville, Jordan...whew.
Rheagan Courville scored a 39.825 in the AA, which matches Sloan's high from last year.
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Auburn @ Alabama (Scores) (ESPN3)
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – San Jose State @ Southern Utah (Scores)
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – Seattle Pacific @ Utah State
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – George Washington @ Sacramento State (Scores) (Stream)
We have a whirlwind ahead of us. In addition to the SEC meets I mentioned in the preview yesterday, Utah's 40th anniversary meet will be happening at the exact same time, which should be enthusiastic.
The scoring this season has been remarkable in a few ways. Oklahoma's average of 197.465 is the highest ever average at this point in the season, at least as far back as those records are kept and easily accessible, and the nine 10.0s so far easily eclipses last season's pace, when we had four by the same point in the year. Still, we haven't had a 198 yet. Does that change tonight?
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.
Remember a few weeks ago when we were young and innocent little ducklings and thought, "Hey, some of the meets this year are being scored with a more discerning standard than we've become used to"? Yeah. Not that. We've now entered the portion of the season where a low-mid 197 is a medium score for a top team, and it takes a high 197 to constitute a standout meet, which is pretty much the same as the last season or two. Nothing changes. The circle of life. Or something. I don't know.
Two more people joined the 10 club this weekend, Ciera Perkins on vault and Georgia Dabritz on bars, and many, many, many more people joined the 9.975 club. We're seeing a lot of individual judges giving out 10s this season while the other judge sits there going, "Y'all tripping." I'm with Other Judge. Obviously and always.
Except this, which was the tumbling pass of the weekend. I said at the moment her routine was better than Kytra's this week, and I stand by that.
Week 4 B: 197.700 Week 4 B leaders: AA - None; VT - Everyone 9.900; UB - Wofford 9.950; BB - Capps, Sorensen 9.900; FX - Scaman 9.950
The Sooners extended their lead this weekend with two more scores over 197.600, which has become the expectation for this team already. Basically, now if they get a 197.300 it's like, "Uh oh, who ruined everything?" Given the strengths of the roster this season, vault and floor were always going to be the talking points, and while those have been the best-scoring and most consistent events, all of the events are pretty much at the same level. It's tough to pick out an area of concern at this point.
As of this week, Oklahoma is ranked first on every apparatus except vault, where they're second to Nebraska. Part of the identity of Oklahoma is that this team is never over-reliant on a single individual, and this year, it's not over-reliant on a single event either. Right now, it's about waiting for the other top teams to catch up so that we can really pick apart this fight.
By virtue of a handy little home score, Florida managed to leapfrog LSU to get back into the #2 spot. It's not coincidence that the Gators had by far their best score of the season when Baker and McMurtry showed their most complete performances so far. Their ability to support Kytra's routines with equivalent scores will dictate the success of this team without Sloan. When they're both getting 9.9s on beam, the Gators are in good shape.
