2022 NCAA Nationals (April 14-16, 2022)

[MaryClare]

Ew. If someone called me the Lavinia Milosovic of anything I’d probably hit them

 

[irichluck21]

 

[Orange]

Honestly, if Jenny Rowland couldn’t get it done this year with that roster I’m beginning to wonder if it’s going to happen ever. The final four consisted of a Auburn team that was probably just happy to be there, a Utah team that screwed up vault or bars every week, and a fairly young Oklahoma team that started off the meet with a really rough floor rotation. Florida was laden with seniors, had the best gymnast in college gym, a ton of ex-elites, and still couldn’t win. They literally stuck one dismount on beam, and it’s not like they were throwing double backs.

For a team that looked fairly unbeatable a few weeks ago at regionals, they basically had one rotation- floor- that was great during finals. They were a little shaky in the semis, too. I don’t know if it’s still a pacing issue or what, but they still seem to be peaking a bit too early. I’m also not sure the old Rhonda technique of not putting your best gymnast up last in the lineup is working anymore. It’s just so obvious at this point. I may also be questioning the recruiting of quite so many ex-elites, especially the injury-prone ones.

Props to Oklahoma. This was not an all-time Oklahoma team, but they got it done. The bounce back from floor was particularly impressive considering how many routines were coming from freshmen and sophomores. Whatever they are paying KJ is probably not enough.

 

[Doug1233]

Oh Trinity. She must be thinking “what the fuck do I need to do to win the team title?!”

 

[MaryClare]

Take the covid year

 

[irichluck21]

“what the fuck do I need to do to win the team title?!”

Nya Reed and Savannah Schoenherr need to stick their vaults like Oklahoma.

Really those two vaults are what ultimately cost the team the title.
I would also say McCusker falling and having to keep Blakely’s score hurt a bit as well as Wong not hitting her BB dismount.
It was all little errors that contributed, but vault was really a missed opportunity, especially with Oklahoma breaking out 6 10.0 start values.
Yurchenko 1 1/2 are worth the risk when they are stuck like Oklahoma did in team finals, but when they are under rotated like Schoenherr and Reed its a recipe for disaster. Ideally they wanted to drop Skaggs 9.8375 lead off FTY. Instead they had to keep it as a score and then Schoenherr’s 9.800 and Richards 9.8125.
That rotation was really saved by Thomas’s near perfect vault at 9.9875.
If Reed and Schoenherr had vaulted like they had regular season, Florida would have won by about .1, even with the other errors they encounted.
Reed was 9.925 and Schoenherr was 9.905 NQS.
If Reed went 9.925 and Schoenherr went 9.900, the team drops Richards 9.8125 and the vault total is 49.5625 which gives a grand total of 198.300

 

[dweiss324]

Thank you Rich! Confirms in my mind Florida had about 18 opportunities to win on Saturday, just didn’t take anything. People saying Florida was robbed it’s like… Try hitting.

It’s dumb that landings matter so much when scores are bunched 9.8-10, but like… Stick your landings. Stick your FTDTs on bars, stuck your aerial fulls on beam, just… Do clean gymnastics. Hit your handstands… Oklahoma doesn’t look like it’s going ANYWHERE so long as KJ can continue to put up rotations like she did on those three events on saturday. You can’t give away 15 different landings and walk away a champion.

Conversely, if you can get 80% of your routines clean and stuck… There you go. No matter how young or soulless your team is

 

[dweiss324]

I swear, the number of comments I saw on Reddit that accused KJ of bribing the judges I want to scream, she doesn’t have to?!!

Skaggs on the other hand… Hitting the cleanest gymnastics of anyone in ncaa in the leadoff and gets like tops a 9.125. That’s on Jenny.

 

[irichluck21]

Skaggs on the other hand… Hitting the cleanest gymnastics of anyone in ncaa in the leadoff and gets like tops a 9.125. That’s on Jenny.

Skaggs requested the lead off role on all four events as a compromise for doing the AA in meets. Kathy said it correctly, best lead off performer of all time. Skaggs was moved to 2nd on bars after leading off the beginning part of the year, but she lead off VT/BB/FX all year long.
By the numbers, Florida had the best strategy. Strong, clean, hit score from Skaggs to lead off. Thomas in the 5th position with a huge number to boost the anchor (Richards, Wong, Clapper, Richards). The anchors came through, except Wong on bars.
However, it was the gymnasts in the 2nd-4th positions up that struggled and really cost the team title.
Schoenherr (2nd vault) Reed (4th vault) McCusker (2nd bars) Sloane Blakely (2nd beam) Wong (4th floor) all put up routines with errors that in some cases were forced to count OR the score to throw out ended up being kept.

 

[navyblue]

It’s clear that simply telling the judges to use the E Panel deductions that are already available to them won’t work. And, I don’t mean to get political, but I also fear that some judges are too scared to not give out 9.9s/tens to certain high-profile gymnasts for fear of the blue-hair brigade coming out against them on Twitter.

It baffles me that people use Twitter as a social media platform for fun or leisure. To me it’s traumatizing just to casually scroll through to the extent that I’m allowed to without an account, but if there was actual ire being directed at me or even more broadly at a group I belonged to… shudder. Unless you’re a journalist – I understand the imperative there.

 

[dweiss324]

I like keeping trinity in the fifth spot, but I think Florida could have been better served by putting people in the anchor spot that could have been pushing that 9.95-10 score with trinity’s bump. I thought Leanne in the anchor spot on bars was smart, and she had gone 9.5+ in that spot several times before. I don’t think it was as successful elsewhere.

My argument with regard to Skaggs is that there may have been the potential for her to regularly score .05-.1 higher in a later line up position. At some point, if you’re Jenny, I think it’s a good idea to say “hey Megan, I love that you love to lead off but I think you could be more valuable to the team by being placed later in the line up, and I’d also love you to help me develop some leadoff confidence in other girls. If we don’t like it we don’t have to keep it, but let’s try it out a few meets and see if that doesn’t result in net score increases so that by ncaa finals we can ensure we’re maximizing our team scoring potential”. I don’t think that’s an unreasonable conversation, in fact I’d say that’s part of Jenny’s responsibilities to the team.

I mean, obviously we’ll never know the implications of taking Skaggs out of lead off, but an extra tenth or two from Skaggs just by line up spot could have made up the difference.

 

[irichluck21]

I like keeping trinity in the fifth spot, but I think Florida could have been better served by putting people in the anchor spot that could have been pushing that 9.95-10 score with trinity’s bump. I thought Leanne in the anchor spot on bars was smart, and she had gone 9.5+ in that spot several times before. I don’t think it was as successful elsewhere.

I have to disagree.

Sloane Blakely got a 10.0 out of the 6th spot on floor following Trinity.
Leah Clapper was almost an automatic 9.900 and got a 10 (last year) and 9.975 (this year) following Trinity on BB. Her NQS was 9.910.
Wong had a 9.945 NQS and ranked 6th nationally with earning a 10.0 this season on bars.
Vault was interesting because it allowed Florida to use a questionable vault. AKA- Blakely’s 1 1/2 which was inconsistent. It also allowed them to play safe because if they had a fall early up in the line up, that 6th gymnast could perform a FTY instead of 1 1/2, which was a good strategy also.

Again, it was 2nd-3rd-4th up athletes that were the cause of the team loss. Not the anchor. Actually Richards benefitted going last on vault and floor with season best performances.

 

[Bananna]

I thought that the win for Oklahoma was well deserved, they’re often viewed as the ‘villain’ team of NCAA women’s gymnastics, but I respect their more intense vibe. I honestly couldn’t imagine any other of the teams in that final rebounding like OU after a poor first rotation.

It’ll be curious to how many of UF’s contributing seniors will take the Covid year now with this result (I’m assuming SJS and Halley Taylor are done). I’ll be truly surprised if Thomas, Reed, Schoenherr and Clapper don’t all return next year. If they don’t, I wouldn’t consider Florida as a lock for Final Four. Only one of the expected incoming class actually signed an NLI (DiCello) which seems to indicate Jenny was anticipating keeping scholarships open for potential fifth years. On that note, with Jenny dropping Olivia Greaves and likely Sophia Butler/Jafree Scott too, it seems she’s moved away from recruiting lots of injury-prone elites. The commits of c/o 2023 so far only include one big name elite (Blakely), whereas before it seemed like Jenny was recruiting half of the national team.

 

[blake]

You said exactly what I’ve been thinking the last two seasons. For example, Florida has 3 DLOs, a 3/1, and a dbl arabian in it’s FX line-up, then Skaggs doing a rudi+jump and 1.5 punch layout. I find it insane that you can start out of a 10 in college with a level 9 tumbling set. I initially liked the 2-pass rule when it first came out, but it’s become a blatant codewh*ring workaround in a lot of cases.

For bars, make it a requirement to have a single-bar release. Make gymnasts work out of their bail handstands - I never thought I’d be begging to see a toe-shoot back in 08’, but lord I’m so tired of the shap+bail+squat on and a E dismount formula. It barely feels like a routine.

On beam, I think they need to bite the bullet and eliminate CV for forward+backward combos. The judges are super hesitant to not reward acro series as it is, but there’s so many front aerial + bhs’ that absolutely milk the pause. I really want that combo to become a relic of the past ala the cat leap combo from Athens.

I don’t think we’ll see a judging-scape arise, one accurately ranks routines, solely focusing on what deductions are available to the judges. Based on the material reality that the deductions outlined in the CoP are more suggestion than obligation, the only remedy I see is making it more difficult to start from a 10.

 

[blake]

I feel vault has been Florida’s least predictable event going back to 2017-2018. Or rather, it’s been the event that tends to take them out of contention even if they don’t count a fall. I think they’ve struggled with the switch in SVs. UF has always had amazing fulls and they were dominant on vault before the it got devalued, but aside from Thomas/McMurtry, their 10 SVs are as likely to go 9.6 as they are to be brilliant.

I enjoy OU’s gymnastics and they definitely deserved the win, but a lot of their routines lack the playback-factor for me. I just don’t feel compelled to rewatch recent Sooner meets the way I do Michigan’s title performance, random UF/UCLA meets, or OU from 2012-2017. Great gymnastics, strong basics and form, but almost a bit sterile in spite of how good they are.

 

[tsarinajen]

My OU gripe is more about their landing position. They’re taught to land with their legs so far apart. It’s not deducted, but for a team that does mostly clean gymnastics, it just rubs me the wrong way. And I like their intensity.

And Florida has struggled on vault since the rule change. I don’t follow NCAA all that much, but with talent they seem to bring in, I’m surprised they haven’t figured that out yet. I do blame the judging a bit for that for failure to reward non-Yurchenko vaults.

Lastly, I agree they do need to overhaul on some difficulty changes.

 

[cuuf]

This exactly. Gotta give that staff credit, they really have perfected the technique of landing greater than shoulder width and then making just a little hop-click of the heels. Always looks like a squat stick.

I agree the vault rotation was their downfall. better landings and they would have won.

And while Florida high profile second, they are not the only team with many elites, how about Utah or even the gold standard UCLA? I would argue they have performed worse. At least UF seemed to have solved the post season fade of the last 3 years or so. Now they need to learn the landings

 

[Dex]

it looks like they are taking a dump when they land, it looks weird

 

[Laura722]

Other than Trinity’s, I haven’t liked Florida’s 1.5 yurchenkos these past few years. It’s the technique or something. I remember when they had Baumann trying one and it was a mess.

 

[Yarotska]

It’s like they either roll over the table or crumble into it.

My gripe with Florida has been that they seem to be more about maintaining what the gymnast came in with rather than cleaning them up to be even more precise and fixing the details.

Oklahoma is far more detailed than Florida, to me. The entire team doesn’t have the natural lines of the Florida gymnasts, but they’re executing better tit for tat. More deliberate in their pursuit of excellence, whereas Florida looks like they’re riding a wave. When they’re on, it’s great, but when one cracks, they kind of come apart. Beam was a glowing example of this for me. Skaggs didn’t absolutely nail her routine, Blakely being a bit tentative, then Baumann jumping out of her dismount, Wong completely blowing her dismount, Thomas missing connections. I don’t remember Clapper’s routine, but didn’t she have a check, too?