SEC Championship Preview

Saturday 3/19
Afternoon session 2:00 ET/11:00 PT
Evening session 6:00 ET/3:00 PT

It's tomorrow! Everything starts very early, with Jesolo getting underway even before the first session of Big Tens. It'll be a huge day of live blogging and gymnastics watching, so we'll have to pace ourselves early. Don't waste your energy before the big-girl sessions begin.

Finally. After years of watching poky live score spreadsheet templates that didn't even update, followed by the recent generous bestowing of an internet stream, the SEC Championship will at last be broadcast live on actual televisions this year. Happy 1968, everyone!

In an attempt to make up for doing such a terrible job at this for so long, the SEC Network is whipping out all the bells and whistles this season, with a TV broadcast accompanied by each individual event streaming online, meaning we can make sure to watch all of Georgia's beam routines from behind our fingers while still getting the competition done in a cool two hours. I'm on board. The SEC Network is also really talking up the hip new quad-meet scoring interface it will debut (to the point where it better physically shoot candy and cheeseburgers out of the TV to live up to this), so I'm eager to see what that looks like. The SEC Net has done a very good job of displaying the scores and running totals in an unobtrusive manner so far, so there's reason for optimism.

NBC really needs to take notes on what the SEC Network does with live scoring heading into the Olympics. With an easy way to update live scores at the bottom of the screen, you don't need to watch Gabby do her grips for 25 minutes while waiting for the score. You can move on to other routines, and then display the score and real-time rankings as they come in. You know, actual development and innovation, not just MEANINGLESS TRIANGLES.

EVENING SESSION
Florida, LSU, Alabama, Auburn

While we all roll our eyes every time an SEC coach says that winning the SEC Championship is harder than winning the national championship (it objectively isn't to anyone who thinks about it for literally one second), this is still a hell of a competition with a solid five teams realistically capable of a hearty 197. Given the scores we've seen this season, however, winning this title really should take a high 197, which probably precludes Auburn and Georgia unless it's a splatfest and they slide on through. Once again, we're looking at Florida, LSU, and Alabama.

Alabama won last season, taking advantage of a beam catastrophe from Florida and beam foreshadowing wobbles from LSU to dance to the top spot with a 197.5, and Alabama's totals so far this year indicate the need for something similar. Alabama has peaked at 197.5s while LSU has gone into the 197.9s and Florida into the 198s. But, if we correct for some silly scoring and for Alabama's epic depth exploration in every meet, there's probably not actually a whole fall worth of difference between these teams. While it will be tough for Alabama to match an ideal meet from LSU or Florida based on what we've seen, I'm not willing to write off the Tide quite yet. But between Florida and LSU? Take your pick. It will be close. Let's get into it.

Rotation 1: Florida vault, LSU bars, Alabama beam, Auburn floor  



Event RQS for rotation 1
Auburn 49.435
Florida 49.390
LSU 49.370
Alabama 49.300

You'll notice something a bit unexpected in those RQSs in that they tell us Auburn should be leading after the first rotation. It could happen because of floor reasons, but I wouldn't bet on it. Although for Auburn, it's absolutely necessary if a title challenge is in play. While Atkinson's is a definite 9.9+ routine (along with occasionally Rott, Demers, and Hlawek), the high floor RQSs across the conference and country reflect loose end-of-meet scoring rather than significant supremacy over the quality of other teams on other events. It will be tough to replicate in this context, and Auburn taking a first-rotation lead would also require a couple other teams under-performing early.

This first event is also critical for LSU to establish a high-scoring pace since bars is their weakest event (the RQS is lower on beam, but beam). Finnegan is obviously a star, and the return of Priessman ups the scoring potential, but a couple 9.800s with form breaks and lower amplitude at the beginning of the lineup put LSU's bars behind those of Florida. If LSU can get Zamardi, Finnegan, Priessman, Wyrick, and Hambrick all in the lineup at the same time, however, that should minimize counting any low scores and bolster what could be a flat event, but those five have not actually been in the same lineup yet this season. Judging by a high 197 standard, LSU must go into the 49.4s on bars to avoid falling off the pace.

Randoms

Some pre-Thanksgiving notes.

Watching meets in 2015
Fair warning with a month still to go before the season: There will be changes to the way we watch NCAA gymnastics meets this year, mostly involving the SEC. 

In emerging-from-the-cave-to-finally-see-the-light news, the debut of the SEC Network means that we'll actually have the chance to watch SEC gymnastics meets live on a television this season. Who would have ever thought?

It's not a ton of live meets (and it still doesn't include the SEC Championship), but it's something. The Pac-12 Network also had a fairly scanty collection of meets its first season before expanding every year since then to the point where the majority of conference meets will be on TV this year. UCLA had 3 televised meets in the first year of P12N, but had 7 last year, and has 8 this year.

In addition to the TV schedule, a large number of SEC meets will be streamed on SEC Network+, part of the ESPN family of streaming. Not all schools have announced their full streaming schedules, but we do know that all Georgia and Alabama (and almost all LSU) home meets that aren't televised on the SEC Network will be streamed on SECN+. As far as I know, anyone who has ESPN as part of a TV package can sign in to WatchESPN for access to SECN+ [EDIT: See comment below]. So, this is good news for people who live in the US and have a television, and bad news for people who don't.