We survived regular season! It gets weirder from here! Conference championships are always the most important thing in the world in the moment and then fade in my memory so quickly during regionals. This weekend will also mark the retirement of about half the seniors in the country, so prepare for emotional whiplash.
Question: Will the SEC champion be the national champion?
This meet is always the headline of conference weekend and has been even more so in the era of conference realignment, but right now, with the four best teams in the country in the evening session, it’s mandatory viewing. The dynamics of all of these teams are so different: Alabama, one of the season’s breakout stars, now has a lot to prove after a listless and disappointing March. Florida has belatedly remembered how to do gymnastics and now looks utterly terrifying. LSU has found consistency in the back half of the season and has the country’s biggest star (maybe excepting Jordan Chiles), but its depth is a question mark compared to the others. And undefeated Oklahoma is doing what Oklahoma does, chugging along unflappably at the top of the rankings with no apparent signs of struggle, but hasn’t really had to lift its level under pressure yet.
The narrative element of how these teams will match up is made even more interesting by the fact that this very much might also be the national final. Does a win here prove somebody’s ability to deliver in a pressure cooker? Does somebody who loses go on to make the right adjustments? If you win SECs, are you less nervous for nationals or more? Would you feel a bit more comfortable if you got to stash your biggest rivals in Corvallis for a couple more weekends instead of staring them all down right now?
Bonus Questions:
Who on earth is going to win the Mountain West? I don’t know where to start predicting this conference. Air Force has been one of the great stories of the season and arguably has more momentum than any team in the country right now. Utah State is doing gymnastics that makes me forget the struggle years ever happened; it’s just a steady, technically sound team that has itself figured out. And San Jose State’s resurgence has flown under the radar, but after a tough 2025 and then the loss of Madison Gustitus on the transfer market, the Spartans are one of the biggest surprises of 2026. Narrative loves all three of these teams, and the numbers don’t give a lot more insight.
Can Minnesota deliver these numbers on the road? I so wanted to believe in Minnesota as a Big Ten sleeper and a credible threat to UCLA, but the road track record just isn’t there yet. That might change. I’d love to be proven wrong on this.
Comment: Some of these afternoon sessions are funky.
The fact that so many conferences have an odd number of teams now makes the session distribution extra hilarious. The five-team SEC afternoon session is relatively sensible, even if the vibes of that meet will be astoundingly weird. We knew this was the alternative to kicking team No. 9 out of the championship, and most fans do think this is the lesser of the two evils. The three-quad Big Tens is outright reasonable and will probably be pretty compelling viewing. GECs being split into the Ivies and the rest feels about right. It gets weirder from there.
The absolute shellacking we expect North Carolina to inflict on poor Pittsburgh in the ACC dual meet afternoon session won’t be the best television of the day, but at least having a four-team evening session makes sense. The same format in the Big 12 leaves us with a really bizarre Arizona State-West Virginia dual, which discomfits me in part because I still can’t accept that those two teams are in the same conference.
Bonus Comments:
BYU was one of the heroes of this weekend. This team defies every prediction of struggle with generational transition and just keeps chugging along. It’s apparently impossible for BYU to ever not be totally fine. But this weekend’s road win at Clemson, despite a Clemson season high, was extraordinarily impressive.
Central Michigan is such a delightful little sleeper. The MAC has been slightly less competitive and a slightly less stalwart presence in the bubble over the last couple of seasons. That has allowed the Chippewas to fly a bit under the radar this year, but they actually have quite a bit going on. That bars team is absolutely stacked.
Concern: Is any team in the country more labile than Denver?
I don’t understand how quickly this team swings. I didn’t expect excellence from this season. While the Denver freshmen were projected to be great and have mostly lived up to expectations, it’s not an easy way to replace so many routines on a team that has looked more or less the same for so long.
Having a season high followed by a season low, particularly in March, is enough to give anyone whiplash. But this isn’t even an isolated incident. There was another road collapse at BYU just a few weeks ago, and that, unlike this week, wasn’t a straightforward beam disaster. Beam consistency is a problem for this team, and that’s definitely part of the top-line story. It’s just wild to see this sort of instability so late in the season.
Bonus Concerns:
How hurt is Chloe Cho? Illinois’ already-narrow road to regionals doesn’t exist without its star, but beyond that, not getting to see her at regionals would be really upsetting.
The poor Big 12 is doomed to forever be the most boring conference championship. OK, there was 2021. That was super weird. But changing out almost all the personnel of the conference changed very little about the dynamic. There was almost never a serious threat to Oklahoma back then, and there isn’t a serious threat to Utah now.
READ THIS NEXT: Bubble Watch: March 18
Article by Rebecca Scally
