2021 Regional Covid/Contact Tracing Casualities: Auburn/Temple

[nog]

Auburn will not compete at the NCAA Regional Championship - Auburn University Athletics

The Auburn gymnastics team will not compete at the 2021 NCAA Tuscaloosa Regional Championship this weekend due to positive COVID-19 tests and contact tracing within

auburntigers.com

 

[nog]

so i guess they’ll eliminate the play in… and both eastern MI and maryland are in straight to semi-final

 

[nog]

only other option I see would be to continue play in and only have 3 teams in semi-final…but that would be shitty.
It is too late to re-configure the entire thing (teams have already travelled) and they can’t move either EMU or Maryland up to semi and have another team from the bubble take their place in a play-in. A lot of teams allowed kids to go home (as their seasons were done), and even if they were still on campus they have not been training to compete and they can not expect them to travel at this point either

 

[RedBirdie]

Hockey ran into this same thing. Teams that had to pull out just weren’t replaced. So I assume same thing here and yes, EMU and Maryland will go on to semi finals.

 

[irichluck21]

Most likely both Eastern Michigan and Maryland will have to compete the play in and they will run with 3 teams in the semi-final.
Huge opportunity for Missouri to make it to the Regional final. They are unlikely to make it pat both Alabama and Oklahoma but if Oklahoma or Alabama have mistakes in the final, Missouri is an underrated team that if hitting cold could be dangerous.

 

[blake]

If I were Iowa/ISU, I would be sooooooo pissed, I don’t get why they don’t flip a coin and let one of them join the other session? It’s not like they’d have to travel somewhere new last minute or anything. I just really wanna see that Iowa floor rotation in the regional final, what a way for them to be screwed after what has to have been the best season for the program in god knows how long. I hope they manage to qualify some individuals to NCAAs at the least.

Like Spencer has said for years, what is the point of being ranked #17 when you essentially get treated as equivalent to #28. They should at least be seeding teams 17-36 so that the regionals have some semblance of fairness. NC State in the playoff despite being #26, plus Mizzou/EMU having a 1000x easier path to regional final than teams ranked way higher than them even before Auburn withdrew, are the most ridiculous to me, but the whole process needs an overhaul.

Get rid of the damn geographical placements at least, the distribution of D1 programs is such that we always end up with clusterfucks like the Alabama regional, not to mention there are so few schools w/WAG compared to other NCAA sports that the geographical placement makes zero sense. /rant lol

 

[irichluck21]

I agree with you 100%

I also would love to see regionals as they are end and instead go to a similar bracket as basketball. Single elimination style dual meets. Every single team would be seeded. Top 8 automatically advance to second round.

They could also add more teams so it’s not just top 36. I would love to see more teams. The fact that good teams like Rutgers, Pitt, Nebraska, Ball State, Washington missed the post season. The 40, 41, 42, 43 ranked teams could even have a play in.

There are lots of ways they could do the tournament in dual meet style.

 

[MLSWAG]

Temple pulled out of the competition due to COVID protocols. Arizona will automatically advance to the next round, and Temple will still have two individual competitors during round two Friday. So, SLC R1 is cancelled as well.

 

[irichluck21]

Sucks for Temple, making Regionals for the first time in I think 23 years.
Hopefully they will be back stronger next year.

Also, changed the original title since the discussion will extend past Auburn.

 

[rue_des_plantes]

How terrible for Temple’s team not getting the experience. They have some talent and good scores in Castrence, Leary, and Roland, but it just won’t be the same or as beneficial as if the team could have been there. A real shame. I like Temple.

Feel awful for Gobourne and Watson, too. They’ve been working hard and Gobourne especially had medal potential at NCAAs.

 

[blake]

I’d never considered that, but I think it’s a decent idea. I’m guessing the NCAA will be very resistant to increasing the # of teams qualifying though, since there’s only 60-ish D1 teams, and the D2/D3 schools rarely crack the top 50.

I love the idea of the elimination style dual meets - I think that’s a much more realistic way to increase parity in post-season versus getting the judges to accurately score/rank gymnasts. Watching Maryland and EMU battle down to the last routine yesterday was so fun - Audrey Barber is a boss!

Seeding all teams just seems like a no-brainer, I’m not sure why that hasn’t been implemented.

How would a dual-meet style postseason format work for individual qualifiers to NCAAs? I guess they could just combine the scores from each session at a regional site, but

I’m super bummed for Temple, especially because the head to head with Arizona had the potential to be electrifying imo. I hope Castrence can qualify as an individual, so she can do her DTY at championships.

 

[blake]

In terms of post-season rankings, what are they going to do with teams that withdraw? Do teams who qualified and withdrew automatically drop to the bottom of the 36 in the final season rankings since they won’t have a regionals score to combine with their NQS? thanks.

 

[irichluck21]

They don’t need to count regionals.
Only four scores count toward NQS this year.