Conference championship weekend is complete and the bracket has been revealed—let the postseason begin! We have once again run our postseason simulator to see who the title favorites are and where to look for the most likely upsets along the way.
Methodology
We collected all of the scores from the 2025 season and wrote a script that randomly selects scores from the remaining pool to simulate a meet, with gymnasts who competed more often during the season being more likely to make the lineup in the simulated meet. We also accounted for the fact that there are more judges in the postseason by adding or subtracting 0.0125 from some of the scores, determined randomly in each simulation; because of postseason judging being slightly stricter than regular season, the model was more likely to subtract .0125 than add it. At the regional level, home scores from the regular season were weighted more heavily than away scores for the host teams while away scores were given priority for the remainder of the field; when simulating the national semifinal and final, away scores were prioritized for all teams. Scores from March are also more likely to be chosen than scores from January and February. Finally, we expanded the script to simulate the entire bracket, starting with the play-in round and finishing with the national final. We ran this script 10,000 times.
Additionally, to allow the information we have on injuries to factor into our simulation, we excluded gymnasts known to have suffered season-ending injuries. Gymnasts with injuries who have yet to return to competition, but who are not definitively out for the rest of the year, are included, but given significantly lower chances of making lineups.
Results
The following table shows how often each team qualified to each round of the postseason across the 10,000 model runs in this simulation.
| Region | Rank | Team | 2nd Round | 3rd Round | Nationals | Finalist | Top 3 | Top 2 | Champion |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pennsylvania | 1 | LSU | 100.00% | 99.91% | 98.72% | 92.29% | 86.67% | 68.57% | 28.53% |
| Pennsylvania | 16 | Arkansas | 100.00% | 75.11% | 18.02% | 1.16% | 0.26% | 0.03% | — |
| Pennsylvania | 17 | Michigan | 100.00% | 24.57% | 1.20% | 0.01% | — | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | 31 | Maryland | 70.43% | 0.40% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | 36 | West Virginia | 29.57% | 0.01% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | 8 | Michigan State | 100.00% | 93.99% | 44.00% | 7.32% | 2.36% | 0.47% | 0.04% |
| Pennsylvania | 9 | Kentucky | 100.00% | 96.53% | 37.99% | 3.55% | 1.06% | 0.12% | 0.01% |
| Pennsylvania | 25 | Ohio State | 100.00% | 7.95% | 0.07% | — | — | — | — |
| Pennsylvania | 28 | Penn State | 100.00% | 1.53% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Washington | 2 | Oklahoma | 100.00% | 99.99% | 99.24% | 96.71% | 94.25% | 84.72% | 57.94% |
| Washington | 15 | Auburn | 100.00 | 90.77% | 12.26% | 1.13% | 0.24% | 0.01% | — |
| Washington | 20 | Nebraska | 100.00% | 8.71% | 0.02% | — | — | — | — |
| Washington | 29 | Illinois | 62.38% | 0.48% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Washington | 35 | UC Davis | 37.62% | 0.05% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Washington | 7 | Missouri | 100.00% | 99.37% | 69.51% | 19.36% | 8.52% | 1.73% | 0.21% |
| Washington | 10 | Georgia | 100.00% | 93.89% | 18.96% | 1.95% | 0.41% | 0.03% | — |
| Washington | 21 | Arizona | 100.00% | 4.56% | 0.01% | — | — | — | — |
| Washington | 26 | Arizona State | 100.00% | 2.18% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 3 | Florida | 100.00% | 98.26% | 83.85% | 57.62% | 39.14% | 20.95% | 8.01% |
| Alabama | 14 | Oregon State | 100.00% | 88.36% | 12.90% | 0.66% | 0.09% | 0.05% | — |
| Alabama | 19 | N.C. State | 100.00% | 9.99% | 0.09% | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 27 | Clemson | 80.72% | 3.28% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 34 | Rutgers | 19.28% | 0.11% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 6 | California | 100.00% | 97.94% | 67.15% | 17.71% | 7.30% | 1.57% | 0.16% |
| Alabama | 12 | Alabama | 100.00% | 92.87% | 35.84% | 4.86% | 1.32% | 0.15% | 0.02% |
| Alabama | 22 | North Carolina | 100.00% | 6.50% | 0.14% | — | — | — | — |
| Alabama | 23 | Iowa | 100.00% | 2.69% | 0.03% | — | — | — | — |
| Utah | 4 | Utah | 100.00% | 98.34% | 88.40% | 41.44% | 23.65% | 7.63% | 1.53% |
| Utah | 13 | Stanford | 100.00% | 75.20% | 12.00% | 1.36% | 0.36% | 0.02% | — |
| Utah | 18 | Denver | 100.00% | 26.21% | 1.19% | 0.02% | — | — | — |
| Utah | 32 | BYU | 66.34% | 0.23% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Utah | 32 | Utah State | 33.66% | 0.02% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Utah | 5 | UCLA | 100.00% | 99.33% | 86.46% | 51.90% | 34.08% | 13.92% | 3.55% |
| Utah | 10 | Minnesota | 100.00% | 95.80% | 11.91% | 0.95% | 0.19% | 0.03% | — |
| Utah | 24 | Southern Utah | 100.00% | 3.81% | 0.04% | — | — | — | — |
| Utah | 30 | Boise State | 100.00% | 1.06% | — | — | — | — | — |
All the the first round matchups favor the higher-ranked teams this year, but none of them are runaway favorites. It is likely we will see some excitement play out in those meets. Clemson has been given the highest chance of advancing, which makes sense given its ranking, but Rutgers has scored 196-plus in back-to-back meets, so the Tigers will need a hit meet to ensure a round two appearance.
In the second round, the teams outside of the top 16 given the highest likelihood to advance to the regional final are Michigan and Denver, who are also the highest-ranked non-seeded teams. No other teams are given more than a 10% chance of advancing to the regional final.
The model does not show any upset favorites to advance to nationals out of the regional finals, but it does show that the most interesting regionals to watch will be Pennsylvania and Alabama. The Pennsylvania regional could be especially exciting, with Michigan State and Kentucky given almost equal chances to qualify to nationals—and don’t forget about Arkansas, which will surely want to prove itself after missing out on SEC championship qualification and having already pulled a regional upset last year. In the Alabama regional, the home team could put pressure on California for the second spot at nationals. Elsewhere, watch out for a potentially close battle between Missouri and Georgia to advance out of the Washington regional.
Utah and UCLA are interesting to look at, as Utah reached nationals in a slightly higher number of simulations than UCLA did, but UCLA is given higher odds of making the national final. This is due to Utah being a regionals host, so home scores were given more weight than away scores when simulating the rounds taking place in Salt Lake City. When away scores are given higher weighting at nationals, the model seems to favor UCLA over Utah.
Some may be surprised that Oklahoma is favored by the model to win the national title when LSU is the No. 1 overall seed, but keep in mind that LSU’s ranking is determined by NQS, which only factors in five team scores (after the season high is dropped from the calculation). The simulator, on the other hand, takes into account the entire season’s worth of scores, including scores from missed routines that were dropped. When ranked by average team score over the entire season, Oklahoma holds the top spot over LSU by almost two-tenths of a point, and its lowest team score is 197.550, almost a full point higher than LSU’s season low of 196.600. While we attempt to account for a team peaking late in the season by giving more weight to late-season scores compared to early season scores, the entire season still matters, and that’s why Oklahoma’s consistency performs better in our simulations.
Want to try this simulation yourself?
You're in luck! Click the simulate button below, and tables will appear showing the results of both semifinals and Four on the Floor! We've also added in individual event winners this year using the scores from the eight teams that make nationals in each run. Click the button again to run a new simulation. Counts of wins will show up under the "Win Count" header. Be sure to share your results on social media!
Calculating...
Win Counts
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Simulation script and article by Jenna King; on-page simulation by Izzi Baskin
