It’s hard to believe that the 2025 season has come to a close! To try to fight the withdrawal, we’ll be reliving NCAA nationals this week routine by routine, looking at every team’s chances of advancing to the final or winning the championship. In this article, we’ll be diving into semifinal two, but be sure to also check out the dives into semifinal one and the national championship.
You’re probably already familiar with our postseason simulator, but if you want a refresher on how that works, check out the methodology here. To determine the chances of advancing throughout the meet, we re-ran the simulation 10,000 times after each routine, in the order that the scores appeared on the broadcast, simulating only the remaining routines of the meet.
The results of our simulations are in the chart below. The first point for each team represents its probability of advancing before the meet started and each subsequent point is the new probability of advancing based on the most recent routine. In the rotation-by-rotation charts, there will always be a probability for “routine 0”, which represents the probability of advancing after the final routine of the previous rotation.
This chart emphasizes how truly exciting this meet was. All four teams were fighting for a spot in the national final. One thing that’s clear from the overall chart, however, is that Michigan State had an uphill battle to qualify. Despite being in the lead after two rotations, it still only had a 23% chance of making the finals, the lowest of the four teams. Hover/click on the points above to see how each routine impacted the outcome and read on to see what we consider the key routines by rotation below.
Rotation 1 (MSU VT, LSU UB, Utah BB, UCLA FX)
UCLA and Utah started the meet with almost identical chances of advancing. However, the third-lowest beam total of the season for the Utes lowered their chances to just 30%. Michigan State has been an incredibly strong vault team this season, and put up two strong 9.9+ routines, but low scores from both Nikki Smith and Gabrielle Stephen left the Spartans with around the same chance of advancing as they started with: 17%.
Rotation 2 (UCLA VT, MSU UB, LSU BB, Utah FX)
LSU and UCLA were both in great positions to advance after one rotation, but both gave some of that lead away during rotation two. After Olivia Zsarmani’s strong 9.925 for Michigan State and an unfortunate injury for Mika Webster-Longin during her vault, UCLA, Utah, and Michigan State’s chances of advancing were all in the 30-40% range, meaning any one of them could grab the second qualification spot. However, UCLA dropped Webster-Longin’s score and Utah counted nothing below a 9.875 during this rotation, giving them a little breathing room above Michigan State, despite the fact that Michigan State had the lead at this point in the meet. For LSU, although Aleah Finnegan’s fall did not count, a hit routine from Finnegan would be expected to raise LSU’s total. Finishing with just a 49.325 on beam brought LSU’s chances below 75% for the first time this meet.
Rotation 3 (Utah VT, UCLA UB, MSU BB, LSU FX)
The third rotation saw some major shake-ups in the advancement chances. For the first time all meet, Utah became the most likely team to advance after Grace McCallum tied her career high 9.95 on vault and LSU started the rotation with three scores in the 9.8s. However, Aleah Finnegan’s 9.9375 on floor and Jordan Chiles’s title-winning 9.975 on bars gave the top two spots back to UCLA and LSU, with UCLA being the most likely to advance for the first time all meet. Michigan State meanwhile dug itself a hole with all scores in the 9.8s on beam and went into the final rotation with only a 4% chance of advancing.
Rotation 4 (LSU VT, Utah UB, UCLA BB, MSU FX)
The excitement continued all the way through the last routines of this meet, with the two most likely teams to advance swapping four different times through the last rotation. An early 9.9+ for Makenna Smith, along with only a 9.8 for Lexi Zeiss and a sub-9.7 for Emily Lee, put Utah in a very good position to advance. Ella Zirbes all but sealed the deal with her 9.9375, giving the Utes a 99.7% chance of advancing. Kailin Chio’s national championship winning vault kept LSU alive in the race for the second spot, but a 9.95 for Ciena Alipio and a 9.975 for Emma Malabuyo clinched second place for UCLA and ended the reigning national champions’ season.
READ THIS NEXT: Data Deep Dive: Reliving Nationals Semifinal One
Article by Claire Harmon
