Conference weekend was delirious and surreal—and not just because of the judging. The expected results felt momentous, the upsets were emphatic, and the bubble drama kept us guessing until the end. Let’s do it all again in two weeks, except in slow motion and even weirder if possible.
Question: Who wants to cause a regionals upset, and who is upsettable?
I’m not that worried about Oklahoma, as odd as it still is to see the Sooners lose anything. LSU is obviously very good and can win the final against a decent Sooner performance, but I still think it’s vanishingly unlikely for Oklahoma to have another true meltdown. A lot of things didn’t go right for the Sooners in Birmingham, but not enough for me to seriously question this team’s path to the final four. What I do think we have to conclude is this is not one of those Oklahoma teams of seasons like 2019 that are able to improve to the point of infallibility by their incandescent rage over a loss. If that were the case, this conference loss wouldn’t have happened. I don’t think we’re going to see that dominant team this year, but the current slightly more mortal iteration of Oklahoma still ought to make it to the championship meet and contend.
Stanford loves an upset and a postseason run, and its ACC victory showed the Cardinal is once again capable of causing big upsets for big teams. It’ll have to get past one of Utah or UCLA to get to nationals, which is a big ask, compounded by the fact that Utah will be at home in the Huntsman Center. Three of the Power Four champs in one regional final will be a great show—and that’s assuming Stanford gets past dangerous unseeded Denver.
The other terrifying unseeded team is No. 17 Michigan. The Wolverines haven’t been their best this year, but they still have some upside and have a plausible target in (admittedly well-rested) No. 16 Arkansas. Hopefully, the Razorbacks spent their quiet conference weekend appropriately and productively seething and will be super focused, because advancing will land it in the most unpredictable regional final in the country. LSU should be secure here, but the victor of the Arkansas-Michigan tussle will meet Michigan State and Kentucky. The Spartans had looked a little sluggish through most of March before crushing their conference meet while Kentucky came into last weekend on a hot streak and then had a disappointing showing, so who knows which of them will be more prepared this time around.
Alabama, like Utah, will be hoping to leverage its home arena into a strong result. The Crimson Tide will likely have to get past California to qualify to nationals. Though Alabama should be really happy with its performance at SECs, where it won the first session by staying somewhat more focused than the opposition, the final result still wasn’t a big number. But the Tide has been held back all year by a fairly random smattering of mistakes week to week (and by relatively sedate scoring at home, as much as Arkansas fans will tell you that’s exclusive to Fayetteville). While I don’t expect to see a miraculous improvement in the Tide’s consistency, luck might be enough.
Bonus Questions:
When do we get official confirmation of the roster cap rule? Because it feels pretty necessary to know at this point. Teams seem to be acting as though it is happening. We just got our first trickle of transfer portal entrants (even though the portal is technically not open right now) that are certainly consistent with the idea that teams with large rosters are having to make cuts. But it’s increasingly bizarre to me not to have any true confirmation.
How happy will Florida be after SECs? I’ve said before that Florida’s discourse-magnet abilities can sometimes overshadow the fact that it remains an extremely good gymnastics team, and on Saturday, it made a credible run at the SEC title and arguably should have finished second rather than third. A shaky beam rotation might leave a slightly sour taste after such an extraordinary, historic bars performance. There’s definitely a sense in which this was a missed opportunity and another sense in which it cemented the Gators as top-tier contenders. Which one we’ll remember more might depend on what happens in April.
Comment: The last teams into regionals all have such wonderful stories.
Utah State, two years away from its head coach walking and taking 15 postseason routines with her. Fifteen! Even having watched this play out in real time, I’m floored by the extent of the rebuild Kristin White and her staff took on and how fast it paid off. The Aggies’ victory in the Mountain West this weekend was such a statement, and to me, every sign points to these results being sustainable.
Rutgers, so talented, so injured, and so dysfunctional for so many years, absolutely blossoming after its head coach was placed on administrative leave. The skills were always there, and how quickly the pieces came together this year speaks volumes about how good this team ought to have been all along. I hope this team is having as much fun competing as I’m having watching, because it has been so remarkable.
UC Davis, with just one prior qualification to regionals in program history, timed this one just right. The Aggies’ best six scores were their last six, and their ability to qualify to regionals seemed like an entertaining mathematical quirk until very late in the game, as those older scores continued to bog down the NQS. They needed to slam the door at the MPSF championship to have a chance, and that’s exactly what they did. This is a team that couldn’t have cut it much closer and then executed perfectly down the stretch with no room for error. I don’t know whether it felt the pressure, but I did, and watching it come together was a joy.
And then West Virginia, even though I’m unlikely to make it into a funny montage this time. This is a team that didn’t have a signature meet this weekend but also didn’t need one. It had a forgettable 2024, a rough January 2025, and then just absolutely locked in. The thing that repeatedly struck me about this team in the back half of the season was the joy and energy in every routine. This is college gymnastics. We’re used to screaming for everything and high-fives for falls and stick items for hops, so it takes a lot of exuberance to be memorable to me. Plus, there was the toilet plunger. If there was ever an explanation for that, I must have missed it. It’s funny, though.
Bonus Comments:
A round of applause for Illinois State. The Redbirds fell short of regionals in the end, but it was a really credible run that got them closer than they’ve been in recent memory. They left it all on the table with an emphatic victory in the MIC that was just short of a season high. This team has come so far in the last few years.
Is it just me, or was the announced bracket almost normal and correct this year? I won’t say I’ve scoured every moment of the selection show, but from what I saw, I didn’t even see any misspellings of gymnasts’ names and much less the typical smattering of straight-up errors in implementing the individual qualification rules and team distribution policies. The selection process is usually so erratic and makes me feel like we’re bad at being a sport. This year, they ran a pretty tight ship. The schedule of sessions looked a bit wonky, and one individual got the wrong team logo, but nobody expects perfection here. (Should we? Maybe, but it’s too late to start now.)
Concern: What was going on in the first session of SECs?
This was one of the most modestly scored conference meets of the weekend, but it was also just really bland from teams that had reasonable expectations of good performances. Only Alabama seemed to have any semblance of focus during the meet, and even that was imperfect.
You can make some excuses. Auburn’s been doing its best given its injuries, and its best turns out to be pretty great. But operating with thin margins for too long does introduce errors. Georgia’s been almost suspiciously consistent for quite a while and maybe was due for a change. Plus, there was that neutral deduction, so the meet itself was a bit better than it looked.
I’m most confused by Kentucky, which has been looking extraordinary over the last few weeks. There weren’t a lot of falls; it’s just little stuff that I’m not accustomed to seeing from Kentucky at this time of year. I’m sure these teams are capable of tightening up for regionals, but the whole session was an odd outlier in what was overall a great, high-scoring day of gymnastics.
Bonus Concerns:
I still don’t know exactly what WCGNICs even is. Clearly the entry criteria aren’t identical to the old USAG meet, but they’re not very publicly available either. We knew that the Ivy League wouldn’t participate in this sort of thing anymore due to being an anti-fun institution, but where’s Air Force? If there aren’t any limitations about how many scholarships a program can have anymore, then why aren’t there more lower-level Division I programs participating, and if there still are limitations, what on earth happened at SEMO in the last year and a half to keep the Redhawks eligible? And if it’s no longer formally affiliated with USAG while remaining not officially an NCAA championship meet, what’s stopping us from letting the two NAIA HBCU teams from competing or at least being eligible to qualify full teams? I have more questions than answers. It’ll probably be fun regardless, but I do want to actually understand what’s happening here.
Towson will be one of the most interesting postmortems of this year. Unlike a lot of teams who ended up on the outside of the regionals cut, I’m not quite sure what went wrong for the Tigers. The talent level and depth on the roster were plentiful. (Eighteen gymnasts did routines in 2024!) Implementing freshmen seemed to be a challenge, and the injuries to Retoshia Halsell and Steph Macasu are definitely tough to manage, but there were still plenty of good routines and even good lineups. There wasn’t a disaster event bogging the team down or anything like that, and bars remained emphatic. After four years at regionals as a team, this was a slightly disappointing exit. I expect the Tigers back in the mix next year, though.
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Article by Rebecca Scally
