#9 Oregon State Preview

I smell trouble in 9.9-land for Oregon State. At Regionals and Championships combined last season, Oregon State recorded five scores of 9.900 or greater (which is already too few), and four of those scores came from Leslie Mak and Olivia Vivian.

Without Mak and Vivian in 2013, the Beavers' world will be thrust onto the shoulders of seniors Melanie Jones and Makayla Stambaugh. Both of them can compete the AA if required, as they were last season, but they are not all-around stars. Jones will lead on beam and floor, and Stambaugh will excel on bars and floor, but the other routines are going to be in the lower-9.8 territory. Jones and Stambaugh will both post a flurry of strong scores, but their contributions alone will not be enough to carry the weight of the team.

The safety nets for OSU may be the transfer of Hailey Gaspar and the return of Stephanie McGregor. Neither is going to light the world on fire with scores, but Gaspar in particular may be the only thing standing between the vault lineup and certain peril. These gymnasts will be particularly necessary because of the current recruiting situation. Not only are the Beavers not bringing in American or international elites, they are not getting the best L10 athletes either. Each of the five incoming gymnasts is a perfectly serviceable JO performer who can compete in NCAA, but there is no one who looks primed to take over any kind of scoring responsibility. Tanya needs to get those Canadian and Australian pipelines up and running again.

Vault:


Amplitude, distance, and dynamics. The Beavers are not a bad vaulting team, but when they compete against the powerful teams, their vaults look utterly flat by comparison. There is an awful lot of piking down. The team isn't losing a ton of scoring potential on this event, but is it gaining that much?

Kelsi Blalock and Hailey Gaspar are the most 9.9-capable, and we can probably expect some 9.850s from Stambaugh and Brittany Harris, but this lineup is going to have difficulty breaking out of that 49.2 range. Jones and Chelsea Tang probably shouldn't be competing under deeper circumstances, but they may be required to throw in their 9.775s. The former Texas Dreams/Metroplex gymnast Nicole Turner used to compete an Omelianchik, so that could be a helpful addition if she's in the mix.

Ranking the 2012 Floor Final

Continuing the mission to pick the real winner of things, it's time to look at the 2012 NCAA Floor Final, a.k.a. the vacation home of our very best friend, controversy.

Unlike the vault 10s, in this case we do have an actual winner. Kat Ding won the title with a 9.950 over the 9.9375s for Elyse Hopfner-Hibbs and Geralen Stack-Eaton. There were . . . a lot of opinions about this result the first time around, so it will be interesting to see how things have developed now that we've had months to reflect.

The top 5 finishers are included below. Watch the routines and rank how you think they should have finished. I did not include the 9.900 routines from Zamarripa, Dickerson, and DeZiel because, while they were solid performances, none would be mistaken for a potential winner. The real shame is that Jaime Pisani probably should have been our floor champ, but she didn't have a strong performance in the final.  

(Where would we be without NastiaFan101 uploading all these individual routines?)

Kat Ding - 9.950