Georgia Regional Preview

A quick glance at Saturday's schedule reveals that regionals have been planned even more horrifically than usual this year. There will be a point during the day at which five of the six competitions will be occurring simultaneously, mostly because they hate us and want us to miss everything. And by they, I mean the people. The people who do the things. Spread the regionals throughout the day, is all I ask. The silver lining to all of this is that Georgia's regional begins an hour before all the others, and Georgia starts on beam. That means we can watch that entire emotional roller coaster unfold without distraction. Thank you, Georgia, for your time zone.

Competing teams (starting event)
[3] LSU (bye before bars)
[9] Georgia (beam)
[14] Oregon State (floor)
[22] Arizona (bye before floor)
[27] George Washington (bars)
[36] Michigan State (vault)

Competing individuals
NC State (Brittni Watkins – AA; Chelsea Knight – VT; Nicole Wild – BB)
Maryland (Kathy Tang – VT, FX; Abbie Epperson – UB; Macey Roberts – FX)
North Carolina (Morgan Lane – AA; Kaitlynn Hedelund – UB)
Towson (Tyra McKellar – AA; Mary Elle Arduino – BB)
William & Mary (Brittany Stover – AA)

The favorite – LSU


LSU should join Oklahoma and Florida at the same level of heavy, heavy, super favorites to advance from regionals, though the Tigers may feel a little more pressure in this one given the quality of the opposition and the scoring pedigree shown by Georgia and Oregon State, both historically and lately. This competition features the second-deepest collection of 1-2-3 seeds (behind the Michigan regional), so LSU will not be able to afford any mind-losing on beam. These other teams are too capable of taking advantage. Sans any mind-losing and fall-counting, however, LSU will slide through to nationals without forcing DD to punishment-sequin anyone.

The Tigers should have been right in the hunt for the SEC title this year but ended up a step behind Florida and Alabama entirely because of their performance on bars in the first rotation. In fact, if you take the scores from just vault, beam, and floor, LSU wins the competition. Lucky, lucky LSU, they'll be starting on bars at regionals. You're welcome. This LSU bars lineup should be quite strong, but as we saw at SECs, it has emerged as the team's weak event and is still too reliant on Finnegan saving Earth through the medium of toe point for a 9.950. Wyrick hasn't shown a great deal consistency since returning, Zamardi can often dismount herself down to 9.850, and Priessman has a couple built-in errors on the pak and a DLO that can look troublingly Shades of Shayla sometimes. All of them could score quite well, but they're walking a fine line between greatness and getting stuck in the 9.800s, as happened at SECs. As we learned, that's not going to cut it when trying to beat Florida.

The fight – Georgia v. Oregon State


I considered throwing Georgia up into the favorite category with LSU as I do think Georgia should be able to 197 its way through this one, especially at home, but Oregon State proved with its performance at Pac-12s to be among the most dangerous and compelling upset challengers in the country. The Beavs simply suffered the (bad) luck of the draw in getting placed with Home Georgia since the original, non-host-adjusted draw would have seen them placed with Road Denver, where they would have been favorites to qualify. This job is much more challenging. The Beavs will take some confidence that the 196.925 at Pac-12s beat the 196.850 Georgia put up at SECs. Not equivalent meets, no host advantage, etc, but certainly a complication to this regional. On the other hand, Oregon State has not hit 197 yet all year, and in spite of all of the Gymdogs' problems, they have done so in three of the last four meets and really should at regionals.

Ames Regional Preview

We're into the second half of the regional previews now, and this is where the dynamic usually changes a little bit. In the top-seeded regionals, we often have one favorite and then a scraping, clawing, vicious-but-we're-all-best-friends-here fight for the next spot between relatively equivalent contenders. But in the regionals led by the 4th–6th seeds, we're more likely to see two clear favorites and then some possible outside challengers who might make things interesting if the day goes well (and by "day goes well," I mean "a big team has an epic meltdown"). The 2015 season has presented a little more competitiveness among those 16-20th ranked teams, which will hopefully make these regionals closer, but in each one there's still a clear pair that really should advance with a hit meet. Here, that's LSU and Nebraska.

Competing teams (starting event)
LSU (bars)
Nebraska (bye before bars)
Denver (beam)
Washington (bye before floor)
Michigan State (vault)
Iowa State (floor)

LSU and Nebraska


Weirdly, LSU suddenly fell to 4th in the rankings at the very end of the regular season after spending months bouncing back and forth between 2nd and 3rd. That little drop is almost entirely because of road scores, with the Tigers having not yet reached the 197.500 plateau at a road meet. That's a bit surprising for a team that is comfortably breaking that mark at home and seems to have more than enough talent to do it consistently regardless of venue. Something always just seems to go a little wibbly, like the bars rotation against Centenary or that tight beam performance at SECs. Like the other top teams, I don't envision LSU running into any trouble at this regional, but proving the ability to get something like a high 197 at a road meet would be a nice bonus.

That huge road score should be doable, especially given the current progress on vault and floor, but it will also take finding those bars landings and fully reaching potential on beam. I'm hoping the beam performance from SECs was just a "things suddenly mattered and our brains went momentarily to jelly" kind of rotation that will not be repeated, but bars remains a curious creature. With fewer huge, automatic 9.9s, and an Ashleigh Gnat routine that still makes me mostly nervous, the Tigers are in danger of giving up some real ground to the other top teams, especially Florida. But they can avoid that fate and get the requisite 9.9s to maintain a solid pace when Jordan, Zamardi, and Wyrick manage to stick. Those three routines are usually in the 9.850-but-9.900-if-you-land-well category. It's just something to keep in mind because this will be a "hit and you're in" kind of meet for LSU. Or a "count a fall and you're still in" kind of meet. 



It should also be a "hit and you're in" meet for Nebraska, though it's a less comfortable status. The Huskers have a too-recent history of being the team that has the epic meltdown and gets eliminated by a 196.025 from Illinois. That said, Nebraska has hit 197 plenty of times this year (though only once on the road) while none of the lower-four seeds have reached the 197 plateau. That means advancing is well within Nebraska's control as long as we don't discover any problems in sector beam. Beam is still an excellent-or-terrifying event for Nebraska, nothing in between, and all the 9.7s from Big Tens didn't do anything to swing the pendulum toward the excellent side. The Huskers are another team that has scored more 48s than 49s on beam this season, but the weird thing is, they've counted a fall only twice, which is not that bad. The bigger problem has been a spate of wobbleburgers from the whole team for a 48.9. They can certainly get through this meet with a mildly iffy 48.9 beam as long as the rest of the events are hit, but any kind of 48 on beam at nationals will not cut it. We need to see some budding confidence and security in those performances.

Auburn Regional Preview

Our sixth and final Regional, hosted by Auburn, is one I've been looking toward for a while now in the belief that Auburn would be the most dangerous #3 seed in the event. Now, I'm not so sure. We'll see. The teams competing in this Regional will be [6] Georgia, [7] Oregon State, [18] Auburn, [21] Michigan, [27] West Virginia, and [32] Michigan State.

The Favorites:
I give the edge to Georgia, but the difference between the Gymdogs and Oregon State is not enough for one team to be the clear favorite. Like in the Utah Regional, it won't take a fall to separate the two. It may just take one sloppy bar dismount (Shayla!) or one flat vault rotation (entire OSU team!) to decide this one.


Georgia had a fine but unimpressive SEC Championships to score 196.575. A lot of competitors who had been going 9.875 were suddenly going 9.800 due to both some tentative performances and the more contained scoring we saw at that event. I expect the scoring at Auburn to be a bit looser, so anticipate Georgia going much closer to 197.

However, an issue that came to light at SECs was the clear reliance on Noel Couch getting high scores. Noel has improved some of her details since her freshman year, but Georgia has been relying on her to go higher than 9.850 on multiple events this year to get those scores in the 197s. Her RQS on floor is 9.915. Do we see her going close to that at Nationals when compared to all the other floor routines in the country? I don't. Now, Georgia does have a number of routines that can go 9.900+ at Nationals, Kat Ding on two events, Nuccio and Davis on bars, and Worley on beam. For Georgia to legitimately challenge, those can't just be potential 9.900s, they have to be 9.900s every time because those scores aren't going to come from anywhere else. So, watch those key routines at Regionals, because if they don't get the necessary scores in two weeks time, Georgia could be facing another 7th-8th place finish.


Oregon State hasn't been able to break that 197 mark with any consistency this year because they are  essentially a three-gymnast team. The scoring onus is entirely up to Mak, Vivian, and Stambaugh to bring in 9.9s. The quality of those three gymnasts is enough to keep OSU ranked fairly high, but nearly all the rest of the routines are going to be 9.8s. The Beavers are strongest on bars (where they should score exceptionally well), but at Pac-12s we saw what happens when one of the big three has an issue. Mak fell on bars, which brought the score down and all of the sudden made bars the worst rotation. There is no one to step up with a big score if one of the top three doesn't convert.

If Mak, Vivian, and Stambaugh all go at least 9.875 on their main events (which is possible), Oregon State can get to that high-196s or low-197s score that will be unassailable by the lower seeds, but if something goes wrong and Auburn is hitting with home scores, this could get a little interesting.