2023 Regionals (March 29-April 2)

[david]

I agree, but I worry that people are reading too much into UCLA and their performance this year. Yes, Janelle has and should be credited with changing the environment around the program to get these results, but at the same time, its not like she is taking a bunch of misfits and molding them into all-stars. UCLA on paper has one of the most talented group of gymnasts ever. Lets give her 4 years, see how she recruits and develops talent. Obviously 1st year results are encouraging.

I agree, time will tell and the recruiting piece is particularly important. You have to keep up the level of talent to remain competitive. And, this is in part why the very visible success in turning the culture around and getting great results in Janelle’s first year is so valuable - it will help with recruiting. If this had been a more classic re-building year or two, recruiting could have really suffered.

The focus on fundamentals and the impact it seems to have had on consistency and confidence is also a good sign regarding developing talent.

 

[Yarotska]

Denver coming back from an 8.2 in their first routine of the night and winning the regional final was truly insane. They really rallied after that. Things like this (and Emelia Eberle’s 8.2 on beam and Nadia’s scratching 3 events in 1979) are reasons I’m not into all scores counting. I like the drama of having to pick everything back up after a disastrous routine (or a zero) and still coming out on top. I think that’s more fun than a zero killing your chances right off the bat.

 

[RAFIKI]

I suspect Kramarenko and Zamolodchikova in particular would agree with you. I’ll never forget being in the arena for this heartbreak…,

 

[MaryClare]

Don’t post that without a trigger warning

 

[RedBirdie]

Just curious, does anyone know why the had Kramarenko vaulting in finals? Pravdina and Klyukina outscored her in qualifications.

 

[RAFIKI]

 

[rlayt]

Omg.

 

[ArnoldRimmer]

And also they in no way needed a DTY. Not even close to one. Someone landing a full would’ve been plenty.

 

[irichluck21]

Just curious, does anyone know why the had Kramarenko vaulting in finals? Pravdina and Klyukina outscored her in qualifications.

Kramarenko fell in TQ on a DTY. So perhaps they felt that had she landed her vault, that the score would be better than Klyukina and Pravdina.

I personally thought Klyukina was a stronger vaulter than Kramarenko.

 

[RedBirdie]

Back to NCAA: God DAMN Bama fans are bitter.

College Gymnastics is broken: Virality, inflated scores and unwritten rules are the name of the game

Hopefully we can put this genie back in the bottle

www.rollbamaroll.com

I don’t disagree that scoring has been insanely out of whack. But this reads as sour grapes. Oh no, other teams besides Bama can be at the top, it can’t possibly be because top talent is no longer at 3-4 schools and Bama has gotten weaker as a result.

 

[irichluck21]

Bama falling to Oklahoma AND Kentucky is bad, but finishing last and having OHIO STATE defeat you is definitely hitting a sore spot.

The article isn’t wrong though and I have to rewatch that semi-final again, but my notes had Kentucky 1st, Ohio State 2nd, Oklahoma 3rd, and Bama still in 4th. But Bama was behind Oklahoma by .1 not .4 and Ohio State was ahead of OU by .1, and Kentucky ahead by .3

Oklahoma indeed was very gifted with scores, the other teams were also loosely scored, but there were multiple OU routines that were too high. Bowers and Smith both had bar scores that were much too high. Bowers shouldn’t have gotten 9.975, maxed out at 9.900 and Smith went 9.900 and should have gone above 9.800. Those two are the obvious impossible scores, and that is .175 at the very minimum where it should have been lower.

But in terms of Bama, they lost to Kentucky in round 1 and that was a fair result, with Blanco falling off beam.
Then Kentucky nailed beam in finals where Bama was sluggish on vault to start. Momentum sometimes is the factor.

That said, Kentucky is very underrated and I have felt that they were the 2nd best team in the NCAA this year ahead of Bama, Auburn, and LSU.
Alabama was in a rebuilding year with a new head coach and lots of freshman. Alabama should be right back at Nationals next year.

 

[Sasha]

Of all the underscoring/overscoring narratives I’ve heard this past week, this is probably the craziest. I really like Alabama, and they’ve got some great athletes and routines, but they haven’t quite been on this year - I imagine that Duckworth’s abrupt departure has made this season particularly difficult. Hopefully they can bounce back next year.

 

[dweiss324]

It’s like an out of body experience reading that article. In what world is Bama not the recipient of heritage, a quality roster, exposure, name fame, and visibility? Blaming a new crop of judges and Olympians and the likes of Cal being a team that focuses on “fan service”??

Also using the words ‘ungodly’ and ‘irretrievable’ in a serious (lol) article was so dramatic I almost spit out my drink.

 

[Caledi]

the likes of Cal being a team that focuses on “fan service”

Yeah I wonder if the author was thinking of a different team? I could see that almost making sense for UCLA and maybe LSU but Cal seems like one of the least “fan service” teams among the top teams. Unless I don’t understand what they meant (I definitely don’t lol).

 

[Laura722]

Bama also benefitted from some of the most egregious overscoring this year, especially on balance beam.

OU got gifts, but there is no way they didn’t deserve to advance. They were good enough to absorb a fall. Lots of fans are bitter, but OU typically puts out clean, polished routines with vertical handstands and stuck dismounts.

Totally different regional, but if Michigan had stuck some of their 1.5’s like OU did, they would have advanced.

 

[irichluck21]

Totally different regional, but if Michigan had stuck some of their 1.5’s like OU did, they would have advanced.

Michigan still should have advanced. They were the best team in that regional. They had the best vault (even with shaky landings). They had the best bars but yet there was no differentiation on that event. How Oregon State was just .15 less is beyond me. Michigan’s bars was first and after that it just seemed like the judges handed out whatever scores despite not as strong routines.

Michigan should have gone, the only debate is whether Denver or LSU should have gone. It was close, but that lights out beam rotation clinched spot 2 IMO.

 

[Laura722]

I agree Michigan should have advanced. I’m saying that if they had hit their vaults like they have most of the season, the door would not have been open. OU counted a fall and went on to hit the rest of their routines, including vault. I’ve seen people basically saying on Twitter and elsewhere that OU shouldn’t have advanced because of counting a fall. I disagree with that.

I saw comments from Bev Plocki yesterday which I totally agree with. She said there is not enough scoring differential between the really great routines and the good routines. But she also emphasized that they left the door open with their errors.

 

[navyblue]

Exactly. Differentiation has been the problem the entire season, way more so in my opinion than 10.0 routines. The fact that a 9.85-9.95 represents such a huge range of quality in gymnastics is an issue that leads to outcomes like Michigan being unjustly excluded when they are arguably the second best team in the country this year. Taking deductions in ways that creates more differentiation doesn’t even necessarily mean that there are that many fewer 10s per se (though probably it would have a bit of an effect there too) …

Here’s where I think the judging can improve specifically on the events:

Vault

• Lack of height, lack of distance, piked hip angles on layout vaults, in-place hop “sticks” versus a zero movement stick, deep squat landings on stuck yurchenko 1.5s – all the above could just be 0.05 deductions that would meaningfully distinguish routines, but several of these are ignored with regularity.

Uneven Bars:

• Lack of height on releases (primarily a problem on some gymnasts’ jaegers), leg separation (often an ignored issue on Maloney variants), cowboy legs on dismounts, flexed feet on dismounts, and sticks that require arm waving/carriage adjustments etc. I think it’s logical to say that a stuck landing with an upper-body adjustment should still be considered superior to a small hop (otherwise, why bother fighting for a stick at all?), but that means that a small hop needs to be a full -0.1 instead of a half tenth like we often see.

Beam:

• Lack of height on an acro series, especially the pervasive LOSO, which is not a particularly challenging skill in the current level of NCAA – so why are judges accepting dumpy versions of it, particulary when it’s the central acro element in a routine – and given that you could do it like this ?!
• I’m pretty bored with the boilerplate dismounts, even after this year’s difficulty increase. On the one hand, I want to say a lot of these roundoff 1.5 twists need a lack of amplitude deduction when they just get splayed backwards instead of upward to make it easier to stick (even the 10-scoring Louisa Blanco is sometimes guilty of this). And yet, the average gainer full off the side gets basically no amplitude by its very non-rebounding nature, so I don’t necessarily know how to systemize a deduction here.

Floor

• Leg separations, bent knees, and flexed feet seem to be regularly ignored on E-level double saltos, which shouldn’t be the case. The reward in difficulty value shouldn’t be boosted even further with turning a blind eye to execution.
• I don’t have strong emotions about leaps – in fact I’d basically rather they just be a CR rather than DV component of a routine – but certainly if you did care, you could take marks off some of the highest scoring floor routines in all of college, like Derrian and Jade and Jordan who regularly fudge the degrees of twisting completion on their leap connections.

 

[irichluck21]

Jessica talked about this on Gymcastic this week and now there is an excellent write up.

"I Wanted To Do That Routine For Him." - University of Maryland Athletics

Tasha Brozowski had done hundreds and hundreds of bar routines throughout her life before she stepped onto the floor to do one at NCAA Regionals in Pitts...

umterps.com

Tasha Brozowski learned about her father’s (Patrick) death the day before regionals. He had been on life support for a week after a motorcycle accident.
She was expected in the bar line up for regionals.
Her coaches were with her when her mother broke the news.

She decided to compete at regionals and helped the team put up a best ever record score on bars.

Later she facetimed her mother as her father was given the Walk of Honor through the hospital before his heart was stopped and his organs could be harvested. Patrick Brozowski was an organ donor.
Her entire team and coaches were with her through the event.

It really is a heart wrenching story but at the same time, very inspiring and truly what it means to be a team and family.

Please read the full article when you have a chance.

Watching that regional I was wondering why Maryland was so emotional during the bars rotation, and this story explains it.

 

[RedBirdie]

It is very very very dusty in here.