It's time for the Pac-12 Championship once again, that annual clash of teams who are really proud of their floor choreography and probably won't peak until June, and as has been the case for the last couple seasons, we enter the competition without a dominant favorite. Utah comes in as the top seed, with UCLA close behind, and Stanford and Oregon State nipping at them a few places back in the rankings. This event has featured some upsets in recent years, and it's easy to envision a back-and-forth affair with multiple lead changes where all four top teams at least pretend to be in the hunt for a while. Utah and UCLA have been the bigger scorers this season and therefore seem the likely favorites, but I don't expect the competition to be as clear cut as that. We have seen Oregon State save its best gymnastics for Pac-12s several times in the last few years, and Stanford often makes a sudden, late, unexpected charge during the postseason. It's going to be a competitive session.
But here's something dumb: This year, because Cal is hosting the event and elected to be in the evening session, these four favorite teams will be competing in the afternoon session, while the bottom four teams (Cal, Arizona, Arizona State, and Washington) will be competing in the evening session. Yes, this is counter-intuitive and bizarre. Or,
as Greg Marsden said, "It’s complete lunacy. It’s just really stupid." Correct. Hole in one, Marsden.
I'll be at the meet, and I expect it to be exceptionally anticlimactic in that second session when the title has already been decided hours before and everyone is just waiting around for these 9.750s to finish, like in a marathon when the stragglers finally stumble across the finish line well after night has fallen. Good for them for finishing, but everyone already tuned out after the medals were awarded.
It's one of those short-sighted decisions that tends to occur a lot in NCAA gymnastics that are made solely with the immediate arena in mind (the hope of dragging in 11 more Cal fans in the evening session) at the expense of being broadcast-friendly or running a serious sporting event in a sane and exciting way.
Still, regardless of when the top seeds compete, it should be a close one. I was going to say "good one." We hope it's a good one. It could also be a mess. But I don't expect a runaway regardless, so let's break this thing down by event.
Vault:
If Utah is going to win the Pac-12 Championship for the first time, it will be achieved on the strength of vault. There is no other team in the Pac-12 within two tenths of the Utes in RQS on this event, and they have recorded each of the top five vault rotation scores in the conference this season. Because the other events will be less cut and dry, Utah will want to fulfill the prophecy of RQS and build up something in the vicinity of a two-tenth advantage here, which is doable. None of the other teams have three vaulters as strong as Delaney, Wilson, and Dabritz, so if Utah is to take that big advantage on vault, they're going to need 9.950s from their final three, which we have seen from time of time this season. But, to get those scores at Pac-12s, they're going to need a couple more sticks than they have shown the past few weeks. You can never expect a 9.950 for a non-stick, especially in a postseason scenario. It happens, but you can't expect it if you're bouncing back on the landing.
Dabritz has downgraded back to the Yfull, which was expected. I'm actually surprised we saw as much of the 1.5 as we did, but Utah tends to revert back to safety in routine composition (which is also why we never see the Dabritz comaneci). It's kind of disappointing because I like to see the 1.5, but on the other hand she's more likely to stick the full. Though the decision really only pays off if she does stick, otherwise it's quite hard for her full to score higher than Delaney's and Wilson's and build the scores to the end of the rotation. (If it were me, I'd have Dabritz doing the Y1.5 in the fourth position in the lineup, ready to bump up the scores for the cleaner landings from Wilson and Delaney to follow. I always like difficulty building to cleanliness as a lineup strategy.)
The rest of vault is a bit of a mixed bag. UCLA has the biggest scorers of the rest of the group in Peszek and Courtney, who can both get 9.950 and will need it to make up for some of the landings we've seen at the beginning of this lineup. If UCLA can manage some 9.825s or 9.850s from Pinches and Mossett along with a hit from Bynum, who has been up and down, they should be in good shape. When the Bruins beat Utah on vault two weeks ago in Ann Arbor, the Bynum hit was a huge factor in that, but then she went and fell last weekend. Cameo performances from Michigan Sadiqua and January Sawa wouldn't go amiss in keeping the Bruins competitive.
