We got some important clarity on teams we’ve been waiting to understand this week. Oklahoma broke out of its 197 rut, Utah showed it does actually have upside, and Florida showed the true extent of its potential for disaster. There are plenty of teams we still don’t quite have the measure of, though, and we’re also starting to get some really fascinating NQS scenarios. Inquiries, remarks, and disquietudes about all of that are as follows.
Question: Can Alabama get itself out of SEC bubble trouble?
I think the answer is yes. Losing to Auburn at home definitely feels terrible for the Crimson Tide, but that was still a season-high score despite a terrible vault rotation. There’s a ceiling there, and hopefully the loss will provide motivation. Plus, three of Alabama’s remaining four regular season meets are on the road, so there’s every possibility of mobility. With one low road score to drop and an SEC road dual on the schedule this weekend, this is a team that could make a big move up the rankings.
Arkansas, the other major contender to lose out on SECs, won this weekend at Metroplex but with a score nearly a point below Alabama’s. And the Razorbacks are running out of road opportunities; there’s just one left before SECs, with two road scores below 196.500 that ideally would be dropped. Their home scores are stronger but closely bunched together, so there’s not as much NQS mobility.
The twist is that they face each other in a dual this weekend in Fayetteville. Last week, the narratives produced by a historically painful road loss for Alabama and a road quad win for Arkansas understandably obscured the NQS implications a bit. At this point, Arkansas is stuck with that 196.400 on its NQS for SEC championship qualification. Watch out for the same pitfalls this week: It’s very possible for Arkansas to win this meet but Alabama gain more from it in the long run. I’m not the first to point out that a 196.550 for Alabama will put the Tide ahead in the standings regardless of what Arkansas does—and passing Auburn as well is mathematically possible. Arkansas, meanwhile, needs to be prepared to produce its best at Kentucky in two weeks because there aren’t any other opportunities to drop a road score before qualification for the conference champs is finalized.
Bonus Questions:
How good is Oregon State once you take Gill Coliseum out of the equation? There are two more Oregon State road meets, and they’re this week and next, with no conference meet for a late boost into regionals seeding. There’s one particularly low road score that shouldn’t be taxing to drop, but the Beavers are already a team whose top three scores are all at home. Like Arkansas, the Beavers have a do-or-die situation looming.
What are Big Fours going to feel like? The old Big Five meets were always a slightly surreal experience, even in the years Elevate the Stage put them on podium. It just feels a little early in the season to be doing postseason-type stuff. Something very odd inevitably happens, we forget about it during the entire month leading up to conference weekend, then feel surprised by the composition of the night session. I wonder if Big Fours will feel any more like a real postseason meet. Maybe even less… Who knows!
Comment: Trusting the process is working for Utah State.
When Amy Smith left Utah State for Clemson in 2022 and took six of the Aggies’ top-performing gymnasts with her, she left behind a truly brutal rebuilding project. (And that’s saying nothing of the large-scale talent exodus that took place during her tenure in Logan, both from transfers and early retirements.)
Kristin White’s recruiting, both from high school and on the transfer market, was very promising. But rebuilding takes time, and missing regionals the last two years was pretty foreseeable. It’s coming together now, though, with a ranking that’s looking comfortable for regionals and back-to-back 196s in the last two weeks. Losing this year’s seniors will be tough, but it’s a surmountable obstacle compared to what this team has already overcome in the last few years.
Bonus Comments:
Division III is good this year, but UW-Whitewater is really, really good. DIII teams being ranked in the 50s is such a historical rarity, and Whitewater has gotten there with really impressive consistency. The Warhawks’ *lowest* NQS-counting score is currently a 191.950.
Welcome to 2025, Brown! The take-home story from Ivy Classic is of course another comprehensive Penn victory behind a season high. (Didn’t I say last week that Penn needed one?) But don’t ignore the previously sluggish Bears getting a season-high of their own by almost a point and a half. I’ve been wondering what Brown’s deal is: Even given known issues with vault difficulty, this roster is too talented to be scoring 192s in February. Suddenly getting it together under pressure is a very promising sign.
Concern: What does Florida have to do to salvage this season?
So, the Oklahoma meet was bad. I don’t have any particular insight into that. The news that Anya Pilgrim is fine is great. At the time of writing, we don’t yet have formal information on Sloane Blakely, but the current indications are not great. It wasn’t an isolated incident, either: Florida is currently 0-3 in SEC road duals this year.
One thing I do know: The comparisons I’ve seen to 2019 don’t make sense to me. That was certainly a flawed team, but it still performed and ranked relatively strongly through the regular season, which is what made the Corvallis disaster so shocking.
I’ve long felt Florida’s early season hiccups are overdramatized by the gymternet when they’re genuinely just part of the Gators’ process, but it’s almost March now. Even without Sloane Blakely, there are plenty of good routines and many potentially great ones compared to even the likes of Oklahoma. Putting them all together has always been the hard part, but this year it seems harder. I also wonder, as much as I love seeing top teams explore depth, whether some of the lineup shake-ups of the last few weeks have come from genuine indecision about the best routines.
I don’t know if something has changed mentally for Florida or whether this is just the result of a team taking a high-risk strategy and losing out this year after being relatively lucky for the last four. It’s also completely possible for the postseason to work out fine; even if the kinks are never fully ironed out, it only takes two relatively good days at the regional final and national semifinal, plus a little luck with opponent performance, for a team of this caliber to earn a perfectly adequate final ranking. At this rate, though, the Gators are looking like an extremely tantalizing opportunity for a regionals upset.
Bonus Concerns:
What’s behind Maryland’s performance this year? Maryland has been an exciting rising team for the last few years, and while last year’s senior class was important, there’s been plenty of talent flowing into College Park as well. Given that, I’m not sure why this team hasn’t cracked 196 yet and is perilously close to the regionals cut. As usual, a stacked March schedule gives the Terps plenty of NQS flexibility to turn things around. Staying on the beam will help.
Is this just what Michigan is now? I’ve been waiting for an aha moment of some kind for Michigan, where the pieces come together and the talent level of the roster is finally realized. At this point, I might just need to wait until next year, because this team has become very consistent in the high 196 zone and hasn’t shown even glimmers of potential for breakout success. This season doesn’t need to end in the top four to be successful, and some growing pains were always expected, but I expected a much more high-variance form of mediocrity rather than so many 9.85s on everything.
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Article by Rebecca Scally
