While the increased parity in NCAA women's gymnastics has been overstated in some quarters, everyone can agree that postseason results are certainly not the foregone conclusion they once were. The best evidence for this evolution is how exciting regionals day has become in recent years as we all switch from meet to meet, follow the scores, and watch for which top team will be the latest to miss out on championships. While Florida pulled through by the thinnest of margins after the tension of that Boise State beam rotation last year, Stanford was not so lucky and rode a truly dismal performance right out of contention.
I made the comment in an earlier post that the team had to count a fall and therefore missed out, but that doesn't tell the whole tale. Stanford found themselves in a rather weak regional and could easily have pulled through even with the two falls on beam. However, in their regional performance, 13 of 24 scores fell below 9.8, and they had a grand total of one 9.9. Even if they hadn't counted a fall, they still wouldn't have broken 196.
Stanford got into an advantageous position in the rankings last season (#4 regionals seed, #2 for most of the season) largely on the strength of their 9.850 routines. While UCLA and Alabama were falling all over the place early on, Stanford kept scoring in the mid to high 196s to jump ahead of nearly everyone else and look like a contender. This was an illusion. They were very consistent, but they never had the big scoring routines to take them far, even if they had made championships.
A quick look at the returning gymnasts for 2012 bears this out. Stanford will have Ashley Morgan and Alyssa Brown on 3 events; Nicole Pechanec, Shona Morgan, and Nicole Dayton on a couple events; and potentially a routine from Jenny Peter. While this group is capable of popping up with a 9.9 here and there (with Ashley Morgan's floor the biggest potential routine), each of them would be very pleased with that score in competition. That's the difference between this group and a championship team. On a championship team, the 5th and 6th gymnasts expect 9.9s with the potential for 9.950. A 9.9 is regular. It's not a peak performance. For Stanford in 2011, a 9.9 was a treat, not an expectation.
