“Upset” was the word of the week—if your bracket is still intact, buy a lottery ticket. Oklahoma is still the team to beat heading toward the national championship, but where the rest of the field , will end up is anyone’s guess.
The Good
The Fayetteville final was one of the weekend’s most stacked competitions, as evidenced by the 197.400 from fourth-place finisher Minnesota.
No. 10 Arkansas has had its ups and downs this season but used the home crowd advantage to upend No. 7 Kentucky for the third time this season and advance to the national semifinal alongside No. 2 LSU. This will be the Razorbacks’ first trip to nationals under head coach Jordyn Wieber, who was brought to tears by the team’s record-setting performance.
In a week chock-full of upsets, none played out more dramatically than the Berkeley regional. Unseeded teams Arizona State and Stanford capitalized on mistakes from No. 11 UCLA and No. 14 Auburn, respectively, to advance to the final alongside host California and No. 6 Denver.
Cal was nothing short of sublime Sunday night, counting only one score below 9.850 en route to a 198.275 and a second consecutive trip to NCAAs.
While the Sun Devils put on another strong showing, it was ultimately the Cardinal who pulled off the most dramatic upset of the weekend thanks to a walk-off perfect 10 from Chloe Widner to secure the final championship berth over Denver.
The Berkeley final also holds the distinction of being the last broadcast featuring beloved commentary duo, Bart Conner and Kathy Johnson Clarke, as the latter announced her retirement earlier this season. We laughed, we cried, and we will miss her very, very much.
The Bad
The flip side of every Cinderella story is heartbreaking loss, and this week was no exception.
Michigan was the only host team that will not be moving on to Fort Worth after being eliminated in the first session. The Wolverines were leading Alabama by over a tenth heading into the final rotation but finished in third place behind a scrappy Penn State after counting a fall on beam.
Similarly, UCLA just couldn’t bounce back from middling rotations on vault and bars, and so Arizona State moved on to the final along with Denver.
The silver lining is that both teams will be well-represented by individuals at nationals: Gabby Wilson (all-around), Sierra Brooks (vault, floor), and Carly Bauman from Michigan, and Selena Harris (beam) and Chae Campbell (floor) from UCLA.
The Ugly
As promised, the Gainesville final was a barn burner in which every tenth mattered. Home team Florida easily cruised to victory while Michigan State took itself out of contention with nervy performances on both bars and beam.
Here’s where it gets ugly: Utah rallied after a disastrous opening rotation on bars to claim the second championship berth from Missouri (who advanced to the final in similarly controversial fashion over Georgia in Session II). The Tigers did themselves no favors with a flat beam rotation, but many fans noted potential irregularities in judging. Was it an impressive, gritty comeback by the Utes? Absolutely! Was it enough to pass Missouri? That’s still up for debate.
It’s inevitable that such tightly-contested, high stakes meets will be hotly debated and scrutinized, whatever the outcome. Is it really too much to ask that the judges not fan the flames by throwing scores that can’t hold up to the scrutiny?
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Article by Claire Billman
Umm did you watch Missouri on beam? They beat themselves. The Utes were not overscored, maybe a .5 high on the Glynn vault? But vault was high for every team. And Utah was arguably underscored on bars, although bar scores were also tight across the board. Again, it’s extremely easy to second guess any score you want but Missouri just didn’t get it done. Stick some dismounts, don’t wobble, don’t have a fall. What is the theory here, Utah bribed judges in Gainesville, or that they (and not Florida) got home scoring treatment? Maybe they are just, I don’t know, like a good team, like maybe 5th in the country or something. Or is your conspiracy that every judge all year colludes to help them beat teams that can’t stick a dismount when it matters.
I re-watched the Gainesville regional and I think there were two key reasons why Missouri ended up in 3rd place:
1. They only had one stuck dismount on the uneven bars (which was the tightest scoring event for all the teams). The fact that uneven bars were tied for their second highest scored event shows that if they had stuck a few more landings, they could have taken second. A lot of those 9.8s would be in the 9.9 range with stuck landings.
2. Missouri did not have a full roster of 10.0 start value vaults. They also did not stick many vaults. It’s hard to stay competitive without at least five 10.0 start value vaults. I only think 3 of their vaults started at 10.0.
Those two things, in my opinion, accounted for their 3rd place finish. I don’t think there is some grand conspiracy here. Utah had one bad event and 3 great events. Missouri had 4 good events.
Found the Utah stan. LMAO.
We’re just going to ignore the favoritism shown to OU by the judges. Ragan has two noticeable balance checks on beam and gets a 9.975. Faith does a vault and steps into Canada and gets a 9.8. That OU judge’s bonus was alive and well in Ann Arbor.
A large step is an up-to-two-tenths deduction. It’s reasonable to believe that the judges took that on Torrez’s vault and nothing else, since her dynamics in the air are good.
I watched the Gainesville regional also. I thought the bars judges were very tight on scoring for everyone except Florida. Otherwise, I didn’t notice any big scoring discrepancies. Missouri did ok on beam, but not great. Some balance checks and missed connections as well as dismounts that were not stuck. Maybe scores were inflated for Missouri in other meets and that’s why fans felt they were underscored here. I haven’t watched Missouri enough to know, though. Utah did a good job on vault and they seemed to have more 10 start values than Missouri on that event too.