Getting started early today with the first of two Big Five qualifying meets. The one that's on TV. The other one isn't. Earlier, I said BTN was dumb. Turns out, I'm dumb. I thought BTN was showing an old meet between Nebraska and Penn State after this instead of the second Big Five meet, but they're actually showing a men's meet between Nebraska and Penn State. Which is also tape delayed. So not better. And in my defense...
Welp, the final weekend of the regular season means a whole heap of senior nights/days, which in turn means a whole heap of 10s. Let's all admit that 90% of the reason we're watching Florida/North Carolina is to see how crazy the scores are and whether Bridgey gets a 10 on floor.
While thinking about 10s, I just spruced up the Hall of 10s a little bit, adding videos for this season's 10s (thanks NastiaFan101!), making sure all the home/away/location designations were there, and adding a couple more years through the diligent work of my garbage brain and scouring RTN. If you notice omissions, of which there are definitely plenty, please let me know. Ideally, I'll keep going back and adding more years. Probably until 2004, because it would take a whole year just to write up all the 2004 10s.
The last weekend before championship season. The last weekend of only two judges. The absolute last weekend of "exploring depth." We hope. Some teams are still "exploring depth" in May. This weekend can be interesting to watch in terms of lineups, which teams decide to use it as an opportunity to rest gymnasts versus which teams feel it's necessary to solidify final lineups this week before the various championships begin. Most teams fall into the latter category and have been using the past couple meets to throw in some rest weeks for various elites and fragiles, but we'll see.
For many teams that are eager to solidify lineups, this weekend becomes the final chance to try to squeeze their 90%-injured athletes into the lineup and make sure they're good to go for the postseason. LSU will hope to get Priessman back into action on Saturday, and if she's actually back with the good and hitting, she could be LSU's secret weapon for a title run. If not, they'll want know that before SECs. UCLA has also been sans about a million crucial routines in recent weeks, with Peng out, no Dejesus/Cipra/Francis on floor last week, and with the deus ex machina that's suddenly going to make bars better somehow still waiting to appear. Um...we need you?
Top 25 schedule Friday, March 11
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – North Carolina @ [2] Florida
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Iowa State @ [21] Kentucky
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Pittsburgh @ [25] West Virginia
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – [15] Missouri @ Western Michigan
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Arizona State @ [7] Auburn
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Utah State @ [11] Arkansas
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – BYU @ [20] Arizona
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – Southern Utah, San Jose State @ [12] Boise State
10:00 ET/7:00 PT – [14] Cal, Sacramento State @ UC Davis
Saturday, March 12
1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Big Five Meet #1: [6] Michigan, [18] Iowa, [19] Minnesota, Rutgers @ Penn State
4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Big Five Meet #2: [16] Nebraska, [23] Illinois, Michigan State, Maryland @ Ohio State
1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Kent State, Yale @ [22] George Washington
2:00 ET/11:00 PT – [25] West Virginia @ Pittsburgh
5:00 ET/2:00 PT – [1] Oklahoma @ [8] UCLA
Live blogging
ALL. THREE. DAYS. It's a bit of a weird one on Friday. We're used to the big Friday night SEC clashes (or FRIDAY NIGHT HEIGHTS, as the cool kids call it), but this Friday sees exactly no meetings between top-25 schools. I'll certainly keep an eye on the big guns like Florida and Auburn, but the absence of significant dual meets also means that this should be a worthwhile chance to check in on non-famous teams we need to see, like Boise State.
Things get slightly more real on Saturday with the qualifiers to Big Tens. But here's something dumb: The first meet will be broadcast live on BTN. (Yay!) After that, instead of showing the second meet, BTN will be showing the tape-delayed Nebraska/Penn State meet from January. Yeah, uh....WTF? Anyway, I'll keep it going through Georgia/Utah and then return on Sunday for Oklahoma/UCLA. Pac-12 coming through with the good ones this week.
Rankings
In the top 10, we could see some jockeying for a place or two this week. Utah, Michigan, and Auburn in 5, 6, 7 may shuffle themselves around, and Georgia and UCLA could flip-flop depending on which team is less terrifying, but the real action happens farther down the rankings. (Georgia theoretically has a shot to pass Auburn for the evening session at SECs, but it's not too, too likely. Auburn can clinch with a 196.950, and Georgia would need an Auburn miss and a 197 of its own to have a shot.)
Utah and UCLA have secured spots in the big-girl session at Pac-12s, but their companions are still TBD with Stanford, Cal, Oregon State, and Washington all remaining in contention. Stanford and Cal currently inhabit those spots, but Stanford is out of action this week. Cal needs 195.675 to pass Stanford, while Oregon State needs 195.850, and Washington needs 196.350. All attainable, which means it may come down to which two sides pass Stanford by the most. Saturday evening just got interesting.
Nebraska's performance in the Big Five will also be critical. The Huskers are currently in 16th but have a 195.350 road score to drop and could move as high as 11th with a big result, which would drastically change the regional picture.
We'll know more about what teams need to do to make the top 12/18 after this week because there are still a ton of different scenarios at this point, but farther down the rankings, Bowling Green is developing into a story. Bowling Green currently sits in 38th, .050 out of the regional spots, but with a meet on Thursday and another on Saturday, a serious chance to move up with some mid-195s jas suddenly presented itself. Bowling Green hasn't made regionals since...quarter past ever?
One more week of regular, normal, average action, then it's on to the conference championships, and then after that, it starts being actually important to do well. So close! With some schools taking byes this coming weekend like lazy garbage teams, we now know a few maximum RQS totals, so we can see exactly how high those teams will be able to rise. Or not rise.
The most critical ranking development came from the significant scores posted by Stanford and Nebraska on Sunday, rendering things somewhat less precarious for both teams. And more precarious for everyone else because now Nebraska and Stanford have proven 197 potential and are going to make some unlucky team very disappointed some day. No one wants a 197ing #3 seed. The problem for them is that Denver and Arkansas have also proven to be 197 teams, making it harder to move up into cozier, higher penthouse floors.
The Race for the Evening Session at SECs is also winding down, with Georgia currently on the outside looking in and trying to snatch Auburn at the last second. Oregon State also currently sits in 5th in the Pac-12, but Washington is the host of the championships this year, so this may get a little wonky. When Cal hosted two years ago, the home team's session was the evening one, even though Cal was in the B group. It didn't go well, but do we know if they've received the memo on that or if it will be more of the same? The Big Ten does things a little differently, putting six teams in the second session, with placement decided by the results at the Big Five meets this coming weekend.
In scoring news, it's March. That's all you need to know. The judges felt like they had permission to start throwing out the 10s like candy again, to least to everyone who isn't named Elizabeth Price. Sloan got another beam 10, Gnat got another floor 10, and McGee also got another floor 10, all gymnasts who have already received 10s on those events this season. Then in UCLA's own SEC-themed carnival of insane scores, Danusia got her first beam 10 for a couple years, and Brittany Rogers got her first 10 ever, just not on the event where she was supposed to get it.
As usually happens in meets like those, the craziest scores weren't the 10s but unjustified 9.925s and 9.950s that pushed the totals up and made the 10s almost necessary. That's why it was so funny that Price didn't get a 10 from both judges this particular bars routine. (I'm not as worked up about vault because it was not a true stick, in spite of doing the DTY. You can't decide not to see it simply because of difficulty, as many times as we've seen that happen. )
Sure, Price has done this identical bars routine four or five times and never received 10.000 for it, but this time is somewhat different because it's not like the judges were keeping themselves clothed and professional, even the particular bars judge who went 9.950 (and who also gave Sophina 9.900 for one of her Evel Knievel dismounts). They were throwing panties on every event for all the teams, and then...
9.975. OK? You're choosing now to have scruples?
Anyway, to the rankings! I'm taking the rankings down much lower this week for a look at who is in regionals contention and how close the race is. (It's close.)
Oklahoma keeps putting away 197 after 197 and remains safe at #1 until at least the conference championships. It's hard to pick at a team with these scores because while there are momentary issues like weaker vault landings over the weekend, Oklahoma is hitting us in the face with solid gymnastics week after week. The real question I have is, interestingly, about the beam lineup. Now, it's interesting in part because I always pretend to have a question about the beam lineup and then it always ends up being better than fine in the postseason because it's Oklahoma and beam. But then again, I look at Kmieciak, Lehrmann, Catour, Brown, Jones, and Capps (the recent six) and I think...is this really the team's best beam lineup?
Florida gained some ground on Oklahoma this week after a crucially large road total, but it's a bit of a treadmill process when Oklahoma keeps getting just as massive or more massive scores. The Gators compete at home next weekend for senior night and will host the annual 198 party, so they cannot drop that low road score and catch Oklahoma quite yet. The real question this week is how much of a 40 Bridget Sloan is going to have on Senior Night. I mean the score. 40.000. I'm talking about gymnastics.
The #2 ranking is safe for now, and much of the potential to challenge for #1 will come down to what Florida can do at SECs to get rid of that peasant 197.075.
Fun fact: Florida has hit all six beam routines just once since January and hasn't had all beam scores reach 9.8 since January 15th. The balance beam situation vulture eyes are on all over the place this week.
The Tigers recorded a season high and used it to pass Alabama into 3rd, which is quite a solid ranking for a team that spent so much of the early half of the season significantly under-ranked. I see no reason to expect LSU's RQS ascent to stop considering that those two non-bold road scores are pretty pedestrian by LSU standards and would constitute a weak meet at this point in the year. Florida is unreachable until SECs, but there will be an opening at that point if LSU records a couple more big 197s. Traveling to TWU and then to SECs, it seems realistic.
That 196.200 disaster against LSU was not a good note on which to leave the regular season, but with no meet next weekend, Alabama will have to live with annihilating my fantasy team and heading into SECs with the poor taste of sub-49 scores on bars and beam still lingering. The bars problem shouldn't really be repeated, although Jetter's double front is always a case of pass-the-stabbing-knife, but beam has been a case of the beautiful disasters this year, especially disastrous when some of the beautifuls aren't competing. Winston only did one event over the weekend. What even was that?
Because LSU looks very likely to increase its RQS and Alabama is capped at 197.400, it looks like the remaining score will be more about fending off the others.
These are the current live rankings heading into today's action, emphasizing the urgency to get a useful score for a number of the teams competing this afternoon. I've been obsessing over the potential regional excitement that will come from having some of these schools as #3 seeds, without taking too seriously the possibility that they could end up out of the top 18 and out of the seeded schools altogether. Without a meet next weekend, Stanford's situation is particularly urgent. Utah would also prefer Stanford get a big score, like now, because if Stanford does have to be "regionally allocated," then Utah's regional is by far the closest geographically.
Nebraska's RQS is being held down by a low road score, so we won't really know where the Huskers stand until after next weekend's meet at Ohio State.
All kinds of things will be happening right from minute one, so pull yourselves together like now. I'll be on SEC duty for the most part, but I'll keep an eye on all the scores and make the necessary comments for those of you focused on the Nastia. I'm like a public service. Don't worry, just everyone is competing tonight.
Two weeks of normal competition until the conference championships. Two. The ranking and RQS situations are currently urgent, verging on EEEEEE, for more than a few teams. Plus, we have the elite world barging in this weekend. If you plan on doing things this weekend that aren't watching gymnastics while making vaguely snarky yet harmless observations, we're not friends.
Top 25 schedule
Friday, March 4
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – [2] Florida @ [23] Kentucky
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – [6] Utah @ [5] Michigan
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – [8] Auburn @ [10] Georgia
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – NC State @ [21] George Washington
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – [24] Eastern Michigan @ Kent State
7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Nastia Liukin Nastiathon for the Nastia Cup
7:30 ET/4:30 PT – [17] Iowa @ Iowa State
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – [18] Arizona @ [1] Oklahoma
8:00 ET/5:00 PT – [9] Arkansas @ [14] Missouri
8:30 ET/5:30 PT – [3] Alabama @ [4] LSU
9:00 ET/6:00 PT – [19] Minnesota, Air Force @ [13] Denver
3:00 ET/12:00 PT – [13] Denver, [19] Minnesota @ Air Force
4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Michigan State @ [11] Boise State
Live blogging
Whew. We've got a Friday in front of us during which every little thing on Earth will happen. All the top 10 teams except UCLA (always gotta be different...) have overlapping meets on Friday, which is either exciting or really poorly planned. Get all 20 of your screens ready. That doesn't even count Nastia's Athletic Cup, which I probably won't blog since so much NCAA action will be happening simultaneously, but I'm sure others will be all up in that business. Pink things. I already blogged it. I usually end up watching it in about October, when all the competitors are starting NCAA and I need to remember who they are.
Utah/Michigan will be broadcast on tape delay on BTN, four hours after the actual meet, which normally would be annoying but in this case may be some built-in prioritization and scheduling. This weekend is a women's basketball whatever, so there will be far fewer live TV meets than usual. It's an internet weekend. Or as I call it, a weekend.
The big deal on Saturday is American Cup. I'll be tweeting. Obviously. Then back to blogging on Sunday for the Georgia/Stanford/UCLA threeway.
Rankings
We have a theoretical chance for movement at the top of the rankings, but just theoretical. Florida would need to score a 198.175 away at Kentucky AND Oklahoma would need to score 197.475 or lower at home against Arizona for Florida to take over the top ranking spot. Both teams are safe at 1-2 even if they do end up flip-flopping.
We could see some spot exchanges as we go down the top 10, with Utah and Michigan meeting on Friday with the higher ranking on the line and Auburn preparing to drop a fairly low road score and looking to leapfrog UCLA. #10 Georgia has the most to gain/lose this weekend with two meets, the Sunday meet away at UCLA being significantly more important. Georgia is still counting a 195.675 road score right now, and with even just a normal meet and a hit beam in both of the weekend's endeavors, the Gymdogs will expect to zoom up, potentially as high as 7th, though a lot would need to go their way with the other teams for that actually to happen.
That UCLA Sunday meet is the most critical ranking meet of the weekend since it will also determine Stanford's ceiling and decide whether the Cardinal are in the running for a #2 regionals seed. With a mid-196, Stanford is right in it, but with another 195, it will be exceedingly unlikely if not impossible.
Eyes on Denver as well, coming off that 197.5 and with two meets this weekend, one at home and one at almost-home against Air Force. I would honestly not be bowled over to see Denver knocking into the top 10 at the end of the weekend if Arkansas and Georgia don't perform.
Iowa is also looking to drop a 194.900 this weekend in a big rivalry meet against Iowa State and could move as high as #12 if things fall just right. Fall being the operative word.
