2016 NCAA: Week 7 Recap

This week in NCAA gymnastics, the teams are now ranked by their Regional Qualifying Score (RQS). The gaps between the teams are getting smaller due to the teams stepping up and showing their true potential.

With the release of the RQS, some teams shifted their positions in the standings. Oklahoma is still holding rank at # 1 with a 197.595 RQS. Their ranking was solidified after they beat Georgia on their home turf, 197.375 to Georgia’s 196.750. Oklahoma is showing consistency in their line-ups and at this point, they are making a push towards the post-season.  Their line-ups are pretty solid. Keeley Kmieciak and Chayse Capps are the go to all-arounders and have been solid every week for Oklahoma. On vault, bars and floor, Haley Scaman and Ali Jackson continue to be strong performers in their line-up. Oklahoma’s main focus (other than consistency) has been paying attention to small details, handstands, extension, and toe point. This strategy has paid off greatly and this is what keeps them in that # 1 spot.

Georgia had solid bars, vault and floor rotations, with Brittany Rogers posting huge difficulty on bars and Brandie Jay showing difficulty plus consistency on every event. Georgia is still at odds with the beam. This week, the Gym Dogs had to count a fall on beam from Brittany Rogers with Vivi Babalis scoring only a 9.175.  Georgia had a couple of weeks of solid beam work, but their old enemy inconsistency came back to bite them in the behind again. Panic sets in when an athlete falls, putting pressure on all the other athletes in the beam line-up.  This is where they are struggling. When they hit, they hit, but if there is a doubt in the minds of any of the girls in Georgia’s beam line-up, it spreads like the plague and infects the whole line-up, causing a gravitational wave ripple effect. Georgia is ranked in the top ten on vault, bars and floor, but on beam, they’re ranked 30^th in the NCAA. As the season wears on and the post season draws nearer, they will need to focus on consistency and staying calm under pressure, because a splat fest on beam in a regional competition could cost a team a trip to the NCAAs.

Alabama has maintained consistency throughout the first part of this season, improving with every meet and calmly moving forward through disappointments. This weekend they won a quad meet at Penn State with Denver and Cornell with a solid 197.350. They had a huge bar score with a 49.600, dropping a 9.825 from Keely McNeer with a 9.975 from Mack Brannan and Kiana Winston and 9.9’s from Amanda Jetter and Nickie Guerrero. Their commitment to consistency has pushed them into the # 3 ranking with an RQS of 197.195, pushing the former third placer holder, Michigan to # 4 with a 196.250.

Although Michigan broke 197 in the past couple of weeks, their downfall came in their tri meet against Southern Utah and UC Davis on Friday night. Michigan had some uncharacteristic mistakes, especially on beam and Southern Utah was able to capitalize on Michigan’s mistakes and pulled off an upset and beat the Wolverines, 196.300 to Michigan’s very uncharacteristic 195.750. The mistakes started early. On bars Lindsay Williams, second in the line-up, casted over on her first kip cast handstand and lost tension. She didn’t fall and she was able to finish the routine without a lot of problems and the rest of the line-up went, fairly well, maybe not as good as they had hoped.

Beam seemed to be Michigan’s point of contention and Southern Utah’s tipping point to bring the meet in their favor. Michigan had to count a fall on beam from Lindsay Williams and a 9.6 from Olivia Karas and Talia Chiarelli after they both had major errors in their routine. Southern Utah was able to capitalize and stayed consistent throughout their beam rotation, dropping a 9.65 from Stacie Webb to give them the highest beam total of a 49.050. They capped it off with a solid floor rotation to close the meet, with Virginia Brownsell scoring a 9.95 and Natalie Trejo and Stacie Webb both put up 9.9’s, giving the Thunderbirds a huge 49.450, dropping a 9.8 from Tyly Bozzuto.

After a season high of 196.650 in their home meet against Florida, Missouri jumped from # 19 in the rankings to # 16, just behind Nebraska and California in a tie at # 14.  Missouri looked much more polished and calm then they have all season, scoring above 49 on bars, beam and floor exercise. Despite a beam snafu from  Shauna Miller with a fall, Missouri showed stellar consistency in their line-up. Tia Allbritten led the Tigers off with a 9.85, showing a great improvement from last week when she fell at Alabama. She showed great control in her skills and lovely fluidity in her movements.

Florida posted their best road score at Missouri on Friday evening with a 197.75- to Missouri’s 196.650. They are looking like they’re more and more ready for the post season.  Kennedy Baker stole the show, winning the all-around title with a 49.575, after Bridget Sloan had an uncharacteristic fall on beam. She solidified Florida’s win with a 9.9 on vault, for a Yurchenko one and a half and a 9.925 on floor exercise with her superb piked double Arabian opening pass, landing it clean with two feet versus the common “lunge out” method usually preferred in NCAA gymnastics. Except for some wobbles here and there, Florida is looking about where they should be looking like at this point in the season.  They have good difficulty on most of their events. Vault perhaps is the exception, with the Yurchenko full being downgraded to a 9.95, the gators only have two vaults in the line-up rated out of a ten, and those are Yurchenko one and a halves from Alicia Boren and Kennedy Baker.

Utah got a boost in the rankings to #5 after securing a road win at Stanford on Saturday, their first win at Stanford, like, ever. This pushed LSU and UCLA to #6 and #7. Utah was solid on all four events. Except for a pretty big balance check from Samantha Partyka on beam, the Utes looked ready to take on the world. Breanna Hughes won the all-around with a 39.400. Maddy Stover anchored the beam to near perfection with a 9.975. Despite loosing Kari Lee to an Achillies injury early in the season, the Utes have recovered well and have merely shifted line-ups with an already stellar pool of athletes to put up on any event. Kassandra Lopez went from just doing bars to being a solid contributor on beam. Hughes and Partyka have stepped up to fill the gaps in the all-around nicely.

Stanford is still struggling to be consistent. On bars, they had to count a fall from the usually incredibly solid, Elizabeth “Ebee” Price, who earned a 9.375 after falling on her Church after Danielle McNair fell on her Jaeger and botched a toe shoot transition from high to low, earning only an 8.3. Taylor Rice struggled on beam after putting up a solid bars set. She struggled on her front toss, landing very low to the beam and just falling off. She had another large balance check on her back-handspring to layout step out series. Ivana Hong followed Rice with a beautiful routine, showing only a small balance check on her series, scoring a 9.825. Ebee came back from her bars snafu to hit a solid beam routine, dismounting with a huge round-off double pike to earn a 9.85. Melissa Chuang anchored beam for Stanford, showing great control and poise, and beat Utah’s Baely Rowe to the punch with her own moonwalk, earning a 9.925 for a second place finish behind Stover. Ebee Price came back with a vengeance on floor, showing huge amplitude on her tumbling with a double layout-opening pass, and on her leaps, with great flexibility and height on her leaps.  She earned a 9.925, winning the floor exercise title. Of course, it probably didn’t hurt that Stanford cheerleading squad was on hand and they were basically providing back-up to Ebee’s floor routine.

In Seattle, UCLA may have beat Washington on their home turf, but Washington is improving with every meet and the teams were only separated by .225 at the end of the night. UCLA won with a 196.675 and Washington scored a solid 196.250. Washington was solid on all four events and their scores were over 49 on every event. Washington showed stellar consistency and major improvement, scoring no lower than a 9.75 on every event. Joslyn Goings of Washington took the all-around with a 39.375, outscoring her teammate, Allison Northey, who came in second and UCLA’s Danusia Francis. While UCLA may have put up high scores, they were nowhere near the consistency of Washington.  Floor was a particular issue, with snafus from Mikaela Gerber and Danusia Francis, both going out of bounds in their floor routines. The Bruins managed to gain a tenth lead in the third rotation after Sophina DeJesus scored a 9.925, followed by 9.95’s from Angi Cipra and Sadiqua Bynum. Washington put up a fight on beam, scoring a 49.150, with a 9.9 from Joslyn Goings. In the end, UCLA only put up 5 athletes on beam, all of who had solid scores to secure the win for UCLA.

This has been a reoccurring theme of this season, the plasticity of the rankings. Really, the depth of talent across the NCAA this season is a wonderful thing to see.  Washington is not the only lower ranked team to show they can be competitive against UCLA or any of the top ranked teams. California beat UCLA earlier in the season while they tried to get the line-ups together after losing Katelyn Ohashi to injury. Teams like Boise State have been able to break into the elite group of teams, showing the gaps between legends and powerhouses and lesser known teams is shrinking as more talented athletes are recruited to different schools instead of proliferating in the top several teams.

Arkansas, #9 is a team that’s proven their worth this season and like Washington, they’ve taken on some of the higher ranked teams in the NCAA and have beat them. This team is also impressive because the program hasn’t even existed for two decades. They’ve really built the program year by year, first with individual stars like Casey Jo Magee and Katherine Grable pulling attention for the team. But this year, the depth of talent is huge, with talent like Paige Zasiski, Amanda Wellick, Braie Spee and Samantha Nelson. They’ve beat NCAA powerhouses, Georgia and Alabama, really taking advantage when the higher ranked team has a chink in their armor. This week, they won at Maryland College Park with a 196.150, making up for a sub-par 195.975 from their meet at Florida last week.

Coming up this weekend, Oklahoma will host Michigan after Michigan’s splat fest at Southern Utah this weekend. LSU will travel to Florida where a showdown could ensue with talented athletes and Ashleigh Gnat pulling out another ten for her double twisting Yurchenko on Florida’s home turf.  Arkansas will host Kentucky, Auburn hosts Missouri and Alabama will host Georgia on Friday.

Saturday, Utah continues their push into the post season with yet another away meet at California.  UCLA is back home to host Arizona State. Washington is also back on the road to go to Arizona. Denver hosts a quad meet at home against Ioaw Southeast Missouri and University of Illinois – Chicago.

Rankings for week 7 are listed below. Some  teams scores are reflecting “0.00.” This is because now that RQS is being used as the official ranking calculation method at this point in the season, some teams do not have enough scores to properly calculate RQS. As a reminder, RQS is calculated by taking a team’s six best scores, three of which must be road scores. The highest score is dropped and the remaining five are averaged.

For example, # 13 Denver’s highest scores are 196.000 (away), 196.350 (away), 196.675 (home), 196.125 (away), 195.900 (away), 195.650 (home). The highest score 196.675 is excluded from the equation leaving 196.000 + 196.350 + 196.125 + 195.900 + 195.650 = 980.025 divided by 5 = 196.005 RQS.

Schedule for week 8 –

Friday, February 26 4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Penn State, Southern Conn., Temple, West Virginia @ West Chester (Unite for Her – Pink Meet) 6:45 ET/3:45 PT – LSU @ Florida 7:00 ET/4:00 PT – George Washington, North Carolina State, William & Mary @ Towson 7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Rutgers @ North Carolina 7:30 ET/4:30 PT – Maryland-College Park @ New Hampshire 7:30 ET/4:30 PT – UW-Oshkosh @ UW-Eau Claire 7:45 ET/4:45 PT – Michigan @ Oklahoma 8:00 ET/5:00 PT – S.E. Missouri @ Air Force 8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Kentucky @ Arkansas 8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Missouri @ Auburn 8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Iowa State @ Illinois-Champaign 8:30 ET/5:30 PT – Georgia @ Alabama 9:00 ET/6:00 PT – Boise State @ Utah State 10:00 ET/7:00 PT – Alaska, San Jose State @ Seattle Pacific Saturday, February 27 1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Springfield College @ Ursinus College 3:00 ET/12:00 PT – Southern Utah @ BYU 4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Arizona State @ UCLA 4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Utah @ California 4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Eastern Michigan, Pittsburgh @ Ohio State 5:00 ET/2:00 PT – Gustavus Adolphus, Hamline, Winona State @ Minnesota (Best of Minnesota) 5:00 ET/2:00 PT – UW-La Crosse @ UW-Whitewater 6:00 ET/3:00 PT – Washington @ Arizona 7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Bridgeport, Northern Illinois, Sacramento State @ Nebraska (Master’s Classic) 7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Centenary College @ Texas Woman’s 8:00 ET/5:00 PT – Iowa, S.E. Missouri, UIC @ Denver Sunday, February 28 1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Bowling Green @ Ball State 1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Brockport State, Cortland State, Rhode Island College, Temple @ Ithaca College (Harriet Marranca Memorial Invitational) 1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Brown, Pennsylvania, Yale @ Cornell (Ivy Classic Championship) 1:00 ET/10:00 PT – Maryland-College Park, Rutgers, Towson @ George Washington 3:00 ET/12:00 PT – Michigan State, UW-Stout, Western Michigan @ Illinois State 3:00 ET/12:00 PT – Illinois-Champaign @ Lindenwood 4:00 ET/1:00 PT – Alaska @ UC Davis 7:00 ET/4:00 PT – Kent State @ Central Michigan

Rankings and schedule via RoadtoNationals.com

Article by: Maria Layton

Photo cover: Natalie Brown

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter