Now comes the point in the year when we must attempt to wrench ourselves out of an NCAA mindset and pay attention to the elite world again. We're little more than a month away from Classic now, so the Mad Max remake that masquerades as the US Olympic selection process is soon to reach its familiarly feverish levels. "Do we actually need a bars specialist?" he asks, sharpening an abandoned femur into a spear.
As a bridge between the two worlds, I periodically like to take the results of past US elite competitions and examine how the gymnasts ranked at that point compared to how they would eventually fare in NCAA a few years later. Who rises? Who falls? Who is like the mousy girl in the high school movie who takes off her glasses and suddenly turns beautiful in the NCAA code? Who was using elite difficulty to mask deficiencies that are exposed in college? As we know, success in elite and success in NCAA do not have a 1:1 relationship.
Today, I have taken the various AA and event results from the 2012 Visa Championships (Visa Championships...feels so long ago. Like the John Hancock US Championships, which were basically contemporaneous with John Hancock) and bolded the gymnasts who competed in NCAA at some point after this competition (so I didn't include Anna Li since she's a category all her own). A number of items jump out.
All-around
1. Wieber – 69.650/61.250
2. Douglas – 60.650/61.050
3. Raisman – 69.200/69.750
4. Ross – 59.750/60.200
5. Price – 59.600/58.500
6. Finnegan – 59.150/58.450
7. Vega – 56.500/57.950
8. Baker – 58.050/56.400
9. Dowell – 55.7800/56.900
10. Sloan – 56.250/56.150
11. Milliet – 55.250/55.150
12. Brown – 54.200/55.500
13. McLaughlin – 55.400/53.150
14. Jetter – 53.550/54.850
15. Skinner – 55.550/51.600
16. Jay – 52.550/53.150
17. Wofford – 51.900/53.350
Fewer than half of the future NCAA gymnasts who competed AA at the 2012 championships continued to do AA in college (and only two or three of the eleven have been full-time AAers for multiple seasons), which helps illustrate the danger of assuming NCAA dominance for all elites. Those who continue at the same strength as all-arounders, your Sloans and Prices and Bakers, are the exception more than the rule. Instead, we have the usual random smattering of competition and success levels, ranging from barely-one-event status to best-in-the-country status. But what's of most interest here is the reason they're not competing AA in college.
We tend to assume that the biggest obstacle for elites transitioning to NCAA is health, that they all would be top-ranked gems if their bodies weren't halfway to the glue factory by now after so many trips to Martha's Texas Adventure. While that's true in several cases, many are relatively healthy but simply not making all the lineups. Even someone who counts in the all-around category like Brianna Brown probably wouldn't have done AA this year if Casanova had been available, and Brandie Jay spent three years not even getting close to Georgia's beam lineup, not because of health but because of "Aaahh, beam!" In her 2015 season at Oklahoma, Dowell was in a similar position to Jay. Sometimes, in spite of an elite pedigree and strong rankings through the age of 18, gymnasts are just not top six on their NCAA teams, even on events that were elite strengths.
In breaking down some of the specific rankings, I'm not taking Sloan into account much because she wasn't up to her full level during 2012, so this isn't really reflective of her standing in the elite world the way 2008 and 2009 were. It's not like Sloan was some middle-of-the-pack elite who suddenly bloomed in college.
Brandie Jay is one who leapfrogged many of her higher-ranked elite peers to become a bigger and more influential contributor in NCAA than she was in elite, finishing largely on par with the likes of Kennedy Baker, who was a higher scorer and more compelling contender during the end of the last quad. Jay is probably the best example here of someone whose dominant years were still ahead of her in 2012.
Finnegan is also an interesting case because if we were to judge her freshman year by the second-behind-Price standard that 2012 gave us, the 2016 season would be considered somewhat average and not the dominance and team-leading influence normally expected of an Olympic alternate. Yet, having gone through years of "does she do gymnastics?" in between, her three events of 9.850-9.900 and ability to leg-event at all this season are a somewhat unexpected and welcome revelation. A lot happens between elite and NCAA, and we don't often maintain expectations for NCAA based on elite results, especially for certain types of gymnasts. I don't think many would say Abby Milliet's NCAA career has been disappointing so far, but she's certainly not top-6 AA level. Even before Grace McLaughlin started at Florida, she was at "maybe a beam routine?" status, not AA-queen status.
A lot of this does come down to injury history/gymnastics style. We tend to maintain elite expectations for gymnasts with Raisman legs who look like they can hold up to four more years of gymnastics, but with the fragile-looking spinny twisties, we're just happy to see a routine at some point, even if it's an exhibition bars. We're like, "Good for her! I can see knees! She still has them!"
It's worth noting that there are no "whoops, I broke and then disappeared into witness protection without another word" gymnasts in this AA collection, which is encouraging. Everyone either made the Olympics and turned pro, did NCAA, or will do NCAA. The only one in the whole 2012 competition who doesn't fit into those categories is Bross. There are usually more.
Vault (one vault, two days)
1. Wieber 15.650/15.900
2. Price 15.800/15.600
3. Douglas 15.350/15.800
4. Sacramone 15.450/15.500
5. Raisman 15.450/15.300
6. Ross 15.100/15.250
7. Finnegan 15.000/14.900
8. Baker 14.650/14.800
9. Skinner 14.550/14.600
10. Jay 14.600/14.500
11. Dowell 14.250/14.700
12. Vega 14.100/14.500
13. Jetter 14.100/14.150
14. Milliet 14.050/14.150
15. Brown 13.950/14.100
16. McLaughlin 13.800/14.200
17. Sloan 13.850/14.150
18. Brannan 13.800/14.150
19. Wofford 12.000/12.200
Showing posts with label Brandie Jay. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Brandie Jay. Show all posts
April 27, 2016
December 20, 2015
#9 Georgia Preview
Roster
Arnold, Jasmine - Sophomore - N/A
Babalis, Vivi - Sophomore - BB, FX
Box, Mary Beth - Senior - BB, FX
Bradford, Caroline - Freshman
Broussard, Ashlyn - Junior - VT, BB, FX
Cherrey, Gracie - Freshman
Jay, Brandie - Senior - VT, UB, BB, FX
Johnson, Lauren - Junior - VT
Marino, Gigi - Sophomore - VT, FX
Reynolds, Morgan - Junior - VT, BB, FX (out with the NCAA's annual bizarre hospitalization)
Roberts, Beth - Junior - backup on VT, BB, FX
Rogers, Brittany - Senior - VT, UB, BB, FX
Sanders, Hayley - Sophomore - UB
Schick, Rachel - Junior - UB, BB (possible VT)
Snead, Sydney - Freshman
Vaculik, Natalie - Sophomore - VT, UB, BB (possible FX)
Recent History
2015 - 9th
2014 - 5th
2013 - 6th
2012 - 11th
2011 - 10th
2010 - 13th
2016 Outlook
Georgia took a step back last season by being so distraught at the lack of Lindsey Cheek on the team that no one could emotionally handle hitting a beam routine anymore, but this year should be better. The sheer number of returning routines is cause for encouragement because Georgia will have options to work with, especially on beam, and won't get trapped into using iffy routines the way some of these other 6th-12th schools will. The Gymdogs should be a 197 RQS team and will expect to better this preseason ranking (another year of 9th would be a disappointment). This is the last year of Jay and Rogers, so this is the time to do something. It will be much, much harder next season. Super Six is a pretty realistic hope for this group, and anything less would be a missed opportunity that may not come back around for a while.
Key Competitor
Brittany Rogers, obviously. Rogers is trying to do the borderline impossible, go straight from NCAA to elite, then back to NCAA, then back to elite, while still remaining a living person by the end of it. It's a grueling schedule, but keeping her healthy is missions A, B, C, D, E, and G. (Mission F is stop fucking up beam—such language!) Georgia will need Rogers fully intact to make those Super Six hopes happen, especially after losing so much on bars. She's the remaining diamond. While Rogers has been big on vault and bars throughout her NCAA career, beam isn't always so much with the good, so let's hope she also turned a corner by hitting twice at worlds. She's too good there not to be the best one. No more 9.700s, OK? Rogers needs to be a three-event 9.9er in her final season to join Jay as part of a formidable scoring foundation, and I'm still holding out for a hero on floor as well.
Vault
Making up lineups is so much easier with full intrasquad videos!
This is the most important event for Georgia in 2016. It needs to be such a big score that it punches us in the face. Georgia has been a good vault team throughout the Durante era (although last year the vault RQS was actually lower than the floor RQS, which...what?), but difficulty should make the Gymdogs an excellent vault team this year, at least top 5 and possibly top 3. Main reason: the Jay and Rogers 1.5 duo. While all teams will be looking at slightly withered vault scores this season, the business end of Georgia's lineup retains the same scoring potential and can still do the 9.900-9.950 double, a dying species. Gigi Marino also has the 1.5, but her landing is more questionable, so it won't be quite the same kind of asset. Her vault will still be useful but won't necessarily outscore the better yfulls the way Jay's and Rogers' vaults can.
A fourth 10.0 SV vault should come from Sydney Snead, who had an excellent 1.5 in JO. She's coming back from injury and showed only a full in the video above, but she clearly has the height and power to do a 1.5, made evident by bouncing across several state lines out of that full. Ideally she'll be working back up to that vault, which would give Georgia a significant start-value advantage over even Florida and Oklahoma, allowing leeway for some iffy landings.
As with every team, the Gymdogs will also be putting up some fulls. I like Broussard for one of those spots, and there will be a solid contingent of options for the final opening. Of note, Lauren Johnson of "remember that time I had basically never vaulted before and then won the SEC Championship?" fame is back. And where did that vault from Rachel Schick come from? I guess someone is healthy again, though she may lack the distance to get big scores from it. Regardless, this should be a 49.4 event for Georgia.
Bars
Along with vault, we've all become accustomed to bars being a big, reliable score for Georgia, but that may not be the case this season. Expect noticeable regression in the bars score, tenths that they'll need to make up with improvements on beam. Brittany Rogers is now the only remaining member of the powerhouse bars quartet, and she should stalder her way to 9.900s and 9.950s every week once again. After that, this lineup doesn't have a ton of 9.9s, making it look like more of a 49.200 this year than the 49.4s we have come to expect. I believe Brandie Jay is singlehandedly trying to make up for this by throwing all the difficulty ever, including her shushunova and a DLO 1/1 dismount. We'll see how advisable that ends up being and watch for when that DLO 1/1 becomes a DLO for sticking reasons, but the girl is going for it. She should be able to extract herself from leadoff 9.825 purgatory to be a more significant part of the lineup this season since she's now the team's second-best bars worker.
Arnold, Jasmine - Sophomore - N/A
Babalis, Vivi - Sophomore - BB, FX
Box, Mary Beth - Senior - BB, FX
Bradford, Caroline - Freshman
Broussard, Ashlyn - Junior - VT, BB, FX
Cherrey, Gracie - Freshman
Jay, Brandie - Senior - VT, UB, BB, FX
Johnson, Lauren - Junior - VT
Marino, Gigi - Sophomore - VT, FX
Reynolds, Morgan - Junior - VT, BB, FX (out with the NCAA's annual bizarre hospitalization)
Roberts, Beth - Junior - backup on VT, BB, FX
Rogers, Brittany - Senior - VT, UB, BB, FX
Sanders, Hayley - Sophomore - UB
Schick, Rachel - Junior - UB, BB (possible VT)
Snead, Sydney - Freshman
Vaculik, Natalie - Sophomore - VT, UB, BB (possible FX)
Recent History
2015 - 9th
2014 - 5th
2013 - 6th
2012 - 11th
2011 - 10th
2010 - 13th
2016 Outlook
Georgia took a step back last season by being so distraught at the lack of Lindsey Cheek on the team that no one could emotionally handle hitting a beam routine anymore, but this year should be better. The sheer number of returning routines is cause for encouragement because Georgia will have options to work with, especially on beam, and won't get trapped into using iffy routines the way some of these other 6th-12th schools will. The Gymdogs should be a 197 RQS team and will expect to better this preseason ranking (another year of 9th would be a disappointment). This is the last year of Jay and Rogers, so this is the time to do something. It will be much, much harder next season. Super Six is a pretty realistic hope for this group, and anything less would be a missed opportunity that may not come back around for a while.
Key Competitor
Brittany Rogers, obviously. Rogers is trying to do the borderline impossible, go straight from NCAA to elite, then back to NCAA, then back to elite, while still remaining a living person by the end of it. It's a grueling schedule, but keeping her healthy is missions A, B, C, D, E, and G. (Mission F is stop fucking up beam—such language!) Georgia will need Rogers fully intact to make those Super Six hopes happen, especially after losing so much on bars. She's the remaining diamond. While Rogers has been big on vault and bars throughout her NCAA career, beam isn't always so much with the good, so let's hope she also turned a corner by hitting twice at worlds. She's too good there not to be the best one. No more 9.700s, OK? Rogers needs to be a three-event 9.9er in her final season to join Jay as part of a formidable scoring foundation, and I'm still holding out for a hero on floor as well.
Vault
Making up lineups is so much easier with full intrasquad videos!
This is the most important event for Georgia in 2016. It needs to be such a big score that it punches us in the face. Georgia has been a good vault team throughout the Durante era (although last year the vault RQS was actually lower than the floor RQS, which...what?), but difficulty should make the Gymdogs an excellent vault team this year, at least top 5 and possibly top 3. Main reason: the Jay and Rogers 1.5 duo. While all teams will be looking at slightly withered vault scores this season, the business end of Georgia's lineup retains the same scoring potential and can still do the 9.900-9.950 double, a dying species. Gigi Marino also has the 1.5, but her landing is more questionable, so it won't be quite the same kind of asset. Her vault will still be useful but won't necessarily outscore the better yfulls the way Jay's and Rogers' vaults can.
A fourth 10.0 SV vault should come from Sydney Snead, who had an excellent 1.5 in JO. She's coming back from injury and showed only a full in the video above, but she clearly has the height and power to do a 1.5, made evident by bouncing across several state lines out of that full. Ideally she'll be working back up to that vault, which would give Georgia a significant start-value advantage over even Florida and Oklahoma, allowing leeway for some iffy landings.
As with every team, the Gymdogs will also be putting up some fulls. I like Broussard for one of those spots, and there will be a solid contingent of options for the final opening. Of note, Lauren Johnson of "remember that time I had basically never vaulted before and then won the SEC Championship?" fame is back. And where did that vault from Rachel Schick come from? I guess someone is healthy again, though she may lack the distance to get big scores from it. Regardless, this should be a 49.4 event for Georgia.
Bars
Along with vault, we've all become accustomed to bars being a big, reliable score for Georgia, but that may not be the case this season. Expect noticeable regression in the bars score, tenths that they'll need to make up with improvements on beam. Brittany Rogers is now the only remaining member of the powerhouse bars quartet, and she should stalder her way to 9.900s and 9.950s every week once again. After that, this lineup doesn't have a ton of 9.9s, making it look like more of a 49.200 this year than the 49.4s we have come to expect. I believe Brandie Jay is singlehandedly trying to make up for this by throwing all the difficulty ever, including her shushunova and a DLO 1/1 dismount. We'll see how advisable that ends up being and watch for when that DLO 1/1 becomes a DLO for sticking reasons, but the girl is going for it. She should be able to extract herself from leadoff 9.825 purgatory to be a more significant part of the lineup this season since she's now the team's second-best bars worker.
December 22, 2014
#7 Georgia Preview
Recent History
Georgia's recent history has been the tale of three eras. The Suzanne era concluded with that preposterous run of five consecutive championships, finishing in 2009 and giving Georgia a legacy of winning that will hang over the head of every coach to follow like an anvil waiting to drop. That anvil dropped on Jay Clark after three straight years of missing out on Super Six and under-performing the talent of his roster, and now Danna Durante enters her third season in charge having led the Gym Dogs back to Super Six in her first two seasons. Last year's 5th-place finish was the strongest for the team since the last title in 2009.
2015 Outlook
Georgia has been on an upward trajectory ever since the doom in 2010 when they missed nationals, but now the question is whether that trajectory can continue and how high they can go. For 2015, it will be challenging to improve on last year's finish in a meaningful way given the quality of teams at the very top and the natural ebb and flow of routines (including the serious and profound lack of Lindsey Cheek this season), but maintaining the results from the last few seasons seems doable. Georgia finished 6th in 2013 and 5th and 2014, and fighting it out with the Pac-12 teams for those Super Six spots in 2015 as well is a realistic outlook.
Once again this year, Georgia will not be dependent on one or two big AAers who dominate rotations with 9.9s at the end of every lineup. A few people can and will do the all-around—in particular it would be nice to see Brittany Rogers get back there, but Georgia's success will rely much more on gymnasts who can be the big star on two events. To put it in the most irritatingly cliched way positive, it will be a real team effort this season. The positive is that they're probably less susceptible to being totally devastated by a key injury, but it also means that a number of gymnasts have to be in form at the same time for them to be as successful as they need to be. There's no one big lineup savior.
Vault
Returning lineup — Brandie Jay (9.910 RQS), Brittany Rogers (9.885), Chelsea Davis (9.880), Ashlyn Broussard (9.795), Morgan Reynolds (no RQS)
Georgia's vault should be in acceptable shape this season because of the exceptional quality at the back of the lineup. Brittany Rogers still needs to come back, but once she does, she and Brandie Jay both have 1.5s that regularly score 9.900, with 9.950 a fairly likely outcome depending on the landing/arena. Those two can keep pace with any team. In some of the preseason videos, Jay appeared to be training an Omelianchik all of a sudden. The 1.5 is the better option for her, so I'm glad they've been able to bring that vault back recently even after the trauma of the accidental DTY last year. I'm still not really sure what happened there. Nor is anyone.
Because of Jay and Rogers, Georgia is 49.4-capable on vault, but that will depend on developing depth and finding the supporting scores so that those two don't have to do all the work. To hang with the top teams, the Gym Dogs probably need to add one more 9.900 and then a couple more 9.850s in the early spots. In spite of Lauren Johnson being out, there should still be some options once various people return from their minor injuries and issues. Chelsea Davis has a very clean, secure vault and has excelled for Georgia early in the order for the last three years. It may be time for a promotion so that she's less likely to get stuck with some dumb 9.825 (like for the above routine) that they can't afford. The freshmen Gigi Marino and Natalie Vaculik will be possibilities, Ashlyn Broussard and Kiera Brown have been vaulting so far in preseason, and Morgan Reynolds also vaulted for 9.775s in the leadoff spot at the end of last year. The gymnasts exist, but they still need to prove they can get 9.850-9.875s and not just meh 9.800s. We'll see. Most teams are trying to find 9.9s on events. Georgia has the 9.9s. It's the rest of the routines that they need to take care of.
Georgia's recent history has been the tale of three eras. The Suzanne era concluded with that preposterous run of five consecutive championships, finishing in 2009 and giving Georgia a legacy of winning that will hang over the head of every coach to follow like an anvil waiting to drop. That anvil dropped on Jay Clark after three straight years of missing out on Super Six and under-performing the talent of his roster, and now Danna Durante enters her third season in charge having led the Gym Dogs back to Super Six in her first two seasons. Last year's 5th-place finish was the strongest for the team since the last title in 2009.
2015 Outlook
Georgia has been on an upward trajectory ever since the doom in 2010 when they missed nationals, but now the question is whether that trajectory can continue and how high they can go. For 2015, it will be challenging to improve on last year's finish in a meaningful way given the quality of teams at the very top and the natural ebb and flow of routines (including the serious and profound lack of Lindsey Cheek this season), but maintaining the results from the last few seasons seems doable. Georgia finished 6th in 2013 and 5th and 2014, and fighting it out with the Pac-12 teams for those Super Six spots in 2015 as well is a realistic outlook.
Once again this year, Georgia will not be dependent on one or two big AAers who dominate rotations with 9.9s at the end of every lineup. A few people can and will do the all-around—in particular it would be nice to see Brittany Rogers get back there, but Georgia's success will rely much more on gymnasts who can be the big star on two events. To put it in the most irritatingly cliched way positive, it will be a real team effort this season. The positive is that they're probably less susceptible to being totally devastated by a key injury, but it also means that a number of gymnasts have to be in form at the same time for them to be as successful as they need to be. There's no one big lineup savior.
Vault
Returning lineup — Brandie Jay (9.910 RQS), Brittany Rogers (9.885), Chelsea Davis (9.880), Ashlyn Broussard (9.795), Morgan Reynolds (no RQS)
Georgia's vault should be in acceptable shape this season because of the exceptional quality at the back of the lineup. Brittany Rogers still needs to come back, but once she does, she and Brandie Jay both have 1.5s that regularly score 9.900, with 9.950 a fairly likely outcome depending on the landing/arena. Those two can keep pace with any team. In some of the preseason videos, Jay appeared to be training an Omelianchik all of a sudden. The 1.5 is the better option for her, so I'm glad they've been able to bring that vault back recently even after the trauma of the accidental DTY last year. I'm still not really sure what happened there. Nor is anyone.
Because of Jay and Rogers, Georgia is 49.4-capable on vault, but that will depend on developing depth and finding the supporting scores so that those two don't have to do all the work. To hang with the top teams, the Gym Dogs probably need to add one more 9.900 and then a couple more 9.850s in the early spots. In spite of Lauren Johnson being out, there should still be some options once various people return from their minor injuries and issues. Chelsea Davis has a very clean, secure vault and has excelled for Georgia early in the order for the last three years. It may be time for a promotion so that she's less likely to get stuck with some dumb 9.825 (like for the above routine) that they can't afford. The freshmen Gigi Marino and Natalie Vaculik will be possibilities, Ashlyn Broussard and Kiera Brown have been vaulting so far in preseason, and Morgan Reynolds also vaulted for 9.775s in the leadoff spot at the end of last year. The gymnasts exist, but they still need to prove they can get 9.850-9.875s and not just meh 9.800s. We'll see. Most teams are trying to find 9.9s on events. Georgia has the 9.9s. It's the rest of the routines that they need to take care of.
December 23, 2013
#8 Georgia Preview
Big applause for Elizabeth Grimsley for putting together this intrasquad highlight video, including athlete IDs.
The first year of the Durante era must be deemed an unqualified success. The 2013 season was all about returning to Super Six for the first time P.S. (Post Suzanne), and the team accomplished that goal comfortably. They weren't strong enough to finish higher than 6th (and some downright weird scores in S6 didn't help anything), but they made it there. Durante also managed to squeeze career-best seasons out of Christa Tanella and Shayla Worley, both of whom I had certainly already written off, and got the team performing up to the potential of its roster in a way it hadn't done in years.
Now comes challenge #2: Maintaining the same level when the smart money says a sophomore slump is coming. The team has lost Worley, Tanella, and Noel Couch, a class with a high pedigree (even if it didn't always show), and is now bringing in an unheralded collection of Level 10s with far, far less expected of them. Losing some scoring potential compared to last year seems likely, at least on paper, so finding a way to get the same quality of out this group will be the goal of the season and will define not only the course of 2014 but potentially the years to come. As we learned during the recent verbal exodus, Georgia will not be getting too many big-name elites any time soon, so getting top scores out this kind of class will be Georgia's route to success in the near future.
Vault:
The silver lining of the fact that Worley and Tanella weren't getting anywhere near vault even if it were made of Championships, and that Couch was off the event most of last season with injury, is that the vault lineup from 2013 remains almost entirely intact. We should see very little fluctuation in either the competition order or the scoring. The team's RQS last season was exactly 49.400, and with the excellence of Rogers, Cheek, and Jay vaulting at the end of that lineup again, something around 49.4s should be very attainable again this year.
September 30, 2012
Freshman Orientation: Georgia
Our NCAA teams have now moved out of the not remotely voluntary portion of the preseason and into the official practice portion. There will not be a great deal for them to report about their progress over the next month or two other than groundbreaking stories like "The team is coming together really well" and "We're excited about the season."
But for our purposes, it's time to start familiarizing ourselves with the freshman on each of the top teams so that we can have our utterly arbitrary opinions about how they will perform solidified and gathering mold well before the season begins.
I'm starting with Georgia, where (in addition to being reliable workhorses in the all-around) the hardest job for incoming standouts Brandie Jay and Brittany Rogers will be finding a way to mitigate the loss of tenths on bars. Kat Ding and Gina Nuccio were bringing in 9.900s every week and showing their teammates what sticking looks like. Chelsea Davis will be expected to take on that Kat Ding responsibility this season, but both Jay and Rogers will need to prove worthy of late lineup positions to ensure there is not a major drop off from last season. Otherwise, they will be looking very 49.200 on an event where they will need 49.400s.
Brandie Jay
Vault
Bars
Beam
Floor
Jay has spent the last three years as one of those solid second-tier elites who lacked some precision and difficulty but who could excel in NCAA because she is talented, has a high skill level, and is relatively injury-free. She has the potential to be the gymnast they were hoping Tanella would be (9.875-y on multiple events).
Vault has been her signature event in the past, and even though it was weaker in 2012 than it had been before, she is capable of putting up a nice late-lineup Yurchenko 1.5 or full that could help make up for the loss of Ding.
Under the elite code, her execution scores were often low on the other events, but many of her major breaks were on skills she wouldn't have to perform in NCAA. There is certainly some leg and foot form in places that I will harp on, and she'll need to improve consistency on beam, but she could be a vital all-arounder.
But for our purposes, it's time to start familiarizing ourselves with the freshman on each of the top teams so that we can have our utterly arbitrary opinions about how they will perform solidified and gathering mold well before the season begins.
I'm starting with Georgia, where (in addition to being reliable workhorses in the all-around) the hardest job for incoming standouts Brandie Jay and Brittany Rogers will be finding a way to mitigate the loss of tenths on bars. Kat Ding and Gina Nuccio were bringing in 9.900s every week and showing their teammates what sticking looks like. Chelsea Davis will be expected to take on that Kat Ding responsibility this season, but both Jay and Rogers will need to prove worthy of late lineup positions to ensure there is not a major drop off from last season. Otherwise, they will be looking very 49.200 on an event where they will need 49.400s.
Brandie Jay
Vault
Bars
Beam
Floor
Jay has spent the last three years as one of those solid second-tier elites who lacked some precision and difficulty but who could excel in NCAA because she is talented, has a high skill level, and is relatively injury-free. She has the potential to be the gymnast they were hoping Tanella would be (9.875-y on multiple events).
Vault has been her signature event in the past, and even though it was weaker in 2012 than it had been before, she is capable of putting up a nice late-lineup Yurchenko 1.5 or full that could help make up for the loss of Ding.
Under the elite code, her execution scores were often low on the other events, but many of her major breaks were on skills she wouldn't have to perform in NCAA. There is certainly some leg and foot form in places that I will harp on, and she'll need to improve consistency on beam, but she could be a vital all-arounder.
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