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 2026 season and wrote a script that randomly selects from these scores 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 February and March are also more likely to be chosen than scores from January. 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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lexington | 1 | Oklahoma | 100.00% | 99.93% | 99.35% | 95.30% | 91.04% | 75.33% | 45.13% |
| Lexington | 16 | Kentucky | 100.00% | 67.62% | 7.95% | 0.09% | — | — | — |
| Lexington | 18 | Ohio State | 100.00% | 31.79% | 1.07% | 0.01% | — | — | — |
| Lexington | 31 | Central Michigan | 51.84% | 0.38% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Lexington | 36 | Rutgers | 48.16% | 0.28% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Lexington | 8 | Missouri | 100.00% | 90.25% | 43.55% | 4.65% | 0.90% | 0.10% | 0.01% |
| Lexington | 9 | Arkansas | 100.00% | 92.15% | 47.16% | 5.24% | 1.08% | 0.13% | 0.01% |
| Lexington | 21 | North Carolina State | 100.00% | 16.94% | 0.92% | — | — | — | — |
| Lexington | 27 | Maryland | 100.00% | 0.66% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 2 | LSU | 100.00% | 99.87% | 98.26% | 89.10% | 80.04% | 57.84% | 28.30% |
| Baton Rouge | 15 | Clemson | 100.00% | 75.89% | 5.17% | 0.05% | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 17 | Auburn | 100.00% | 23.72% | 0.65% | — | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 30 | Air Force | 47.94% | 0.22% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 34 | Nebraska | 52.06% | 0.30% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 7 | Stanford | 100.00% | 94.56% | 64.78% | 10.69% | 4.45% | 1.28% | 0.18% |
| Baton Rouge | 10 | Michigan | 100.00% | 89.66% | 30.61% | 1.69% | 0.41% | 0.06% | — |
| Baton Rouge | 22 | North Carolina | 100.00% | 13.79% | 0.52% | — | — | — | — |
| Baton Rouge | 26 | Utah State | 100.00% | 1.99% | 0.01% | — | — | — | — |
| Tempe | 3 | Florida | 100.00% | 99.82% | 97.03% | 84.84% | 73.66% | 50.85% | 23.53% |
| Tempe | 14 | California | 100.00% | 74.39% | 5.13% | 0.09% | 0.01% | — | — |
| Tempe | 20 | Penn State | 100.00% | 25.14% | 0.33% | — | — | — | — |
| Tempe | 32 | Arizona State | 45.31% | 0.23% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tempe | 33 | Arizona | 54.69% | 0.42% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Tempe | 6 | Georgia | 100.00% | 95.93% | 67.39% | 11.84% | 5.09% | 1.24% | 0.20% |
| Tempe | 11 | Michigan State | 100.00% | 94.97% | 30.03% | 1.70% | 0.40% | 0.04% | — |
| Tempe | 24 | BYU | 100.00% | 7.10% | 0.09% | — | — | — | — |
| Tempe | 28 | Southern Utah | 100.00% | 2.00% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Corvallis | 4 | UCLA | 100.00% | 99.27% | 81.56% | 44.41% | 21.10% | 6.76% | 1.48% |
| Corvallis | 13 | Minnesota | 100.00% | 71.67% | 7.19% | 0.47% | 0.06% | 0.01% | — |
| Corvallis | 19 | Iowa | 100.00% | 28.50% | 0.50% | — | — | — | — |
| Corvallis | 29 | San Jose State | 48.75% | 0.14% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Corvallis | 35 | Washington | 51.25% | 0.42% | — | — | — | — | — |
| Corvallis | 5 | Alabama | 100.00% | 97.93% | 79.43% | 41.57% | 19.63% | 5.78% | 1.00% |
| Corvallis | 12 | Utah | 100.00% | 81.54% | 30.93% | 8.26% | 2.13% | 0.58% | 0.16% |
| Corvallis | 23 | Denver | 100.00% | 9.56% | 0.21% | — | — | — | — |
| Corvallis | 25 | Oregon State | 100.00% | 10.97% | 0.18% | — | — | — | — |
All of the first round matchups are projected to be toss-ups this year, with no team given more than a 55% chance of advancing to the second round. In fact, three of the four matchups are slightly in favor of the lower-ranked team!
In the second round, Ohio State, Auburn, Penn State, and Iowa are all given at least a 20% chance of upsetting higher-ranked opponents, ensuring that each regional location has matchups to watch on these days. Host Kentucky looks to be the most vulnerable among the top 16 seeds in this round, even with the boost the model gives to home teams.
In the third round, the model gives No. 9 Arkansas a slight edge over No. 8 Missouri to qualify to nationals, but other than that, all the higher seeds are favored. However, Michigan, Michigan State, and Utah are all given about a 30% chance to pull off an upset in their respective regional finals.
The teams that advance out of the Lexington regional will compete against the teams that advance out of the Corvallis regional in one of the national semifinals, with the Baton Rouge and Tempe survivors meeting in the other. Oklahoma is, of course, heavily favored to make it through to the final, but the second spot out of that semifinal looks to be a very close competition between UCLA and Alabama—that’s assuming Utah doesn’t pull off an upset at regionals. The other side of the bracket looks a little more straightforward, with LSU and Florida both heavily favored to qualify to the national final, albeit at slightly lower odds than Oklahoma’s.
It’s no surprise to see that Oklahoma is favored to win the national title, though at a less than 50% likelihood according to the model. Overall, the top three seeds won the national title in almost 97% of the model runs, so there is a large drop-off in teams’ chances to win after that. Given Oklahoma’s consistency, LSU’s ability to peak in big moments, and Florida’s late-season surge, this postseason is difficult to predict but is sure to come down to the wire.
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 and Claire Harmon
