Champaign Regional Preview

The second preview on the docket features our #2 national seed, the Oklahoma Sooners, traveling to Illinois in an effort to earn their place in yet another National Championship. Along with [2] Oklahoma, the teams competing in this Regional are [11] Stanford, [14] Denver, [22] Illinois, [24] Kentucky, and [32] Illinois-Chicago.

The Favorite:

For being the #2 team in the country, Oklahoma certainly has been flying under the radar lately. The Sooners put up a significant score at the Big 12 Championships at home (the highest in the country that weekend, in fact), so they should be in the forefront of the conversation. And yet, they preceded that result with two lackluster road performances and have to deal with the injury to Kayla Nowak, so there are definite questions as to how this team is oriented heading into the championship season and whether their best gymnastics is still ahead of them.

However, like Florida, I don't see much of a chance that Oklahoma will fail to advance. This team is consistent enough that, even whey they perform poorly, they're still able to avoid counting falls and manage an adequate score. Though the Sooners were all kinds of off when they visited UCLA, they still posted a mid-196, and even that score would be enough to advance out of this group.

When watching Oklahoma at this Regional, keep an eye on amplitude of elements across all the events. This area is always evaluated inconsistently during the regular season, but when trying to separate routines during the postseason, it can become a much greater issue. The Sooners have enough difficulty and excel at putting up consistent routines, but in vaulting, tumbling, and some of the beam elements, Oklahoma needs to show competitive amplitude, speed, lightness, and extension, the kinds of qualities that gymnastics people mean when they talk about showing sufficient dynamics.

But for now, I expect to see Oklahoma's lineup hit a lot of 9.875 routines this weekend and score around 197, which would be enough to qualify easily.