The Kentucky Regional

Regional Draw

Schedule

April 2, 2:00pm ET – CMU v Rutgers Play-in
April 3, 1:00pm ET – Semifinal #1
April 3, 7:00pm ET – Semifinal #2
April 5, 5:00pm ET – Final

What’s Her Story?

With national #1 Oklahoma heavily favored to advance to the championship, this regional serves as the exact argument for the #8 and #9 teams being paired at the same regional, which is: we have two teams in Missouri and Arkansas that are wholly indistinguishable even after an entire regular season of constantly SECing together, so the gals can just decide among themselves who else goes to nationals. You can parse those scores until the end of time to see who’s favored, but it’s nobody. Go, do sports, and we’ll see who sticks more.

Where this regional gets more complicated is the Kentucky factor. Kentucky started the season as a Four-Alarm Garbage Fire on beam, then figured it out well enough to escape the conference basement and get seeded at its own regional. Last weekend, Kentucky finished just .150 behind Missouri and .050 behind Arkansas at the SEC Championship to establish itself as a more-than-reasonable spoiler if able to produce a home-brewed stick parade—or if able to figure out how to turn on the wind machine during everyone else’s beam.

What’s Her Semifinal Story?

Rotation Order

Missouri and Arkansas are pretty heavily favored to get through from this session…with a hit meet. This presents as your classic midday “I’m going to start a load of laundry, but call me if someone falls” semifinal. Recent performances tell us to expect about a mid-196 out of NC State with all 49+ rotations, which is not a challenge that Missouri and Arkansas can just snore through. Count a 9.2 on beam, and we’ll start cranking the upset alarm.

Of note, Missouri selected bars as its starting event and then Arkansas selected floor, meaning NC State will have Olympic order despite only getting third pick.

Can Ohio State do this? With Kentucky competing at home and generally looking under-ranked because of the weak start (UK’s NQS is 196.550, but the team hasn’t actually gone that low since January), focus has been more on the ceiling of Kentucky’s potential regional performance, but the floor is also worth considering.

Looking at the team trackers below, Ohio State’s approximation of a best/better-case-scenario total would be 196.965, and Kentucky went 196.925 at SECs. That tells us an excellent meet from Ohio State can score right at Kentucky’s SEC performance without necessarily relying on Kentucky to miss, but it would take that excellent meet.

Individual Qualification

For those who do not make nationals with a team, one AAer and one gymnast on each apparatus also advance.

All-Around

The national rankings for the all-arounders in the Kentucky regional

If Kentucky doesn’t advance, home-team hope Delaynee Rodriguez seems a solid choice to make nationals for the all-around. She’s tied with Chloe Cho in the rankings, but Cho did not compete vault at the last two meets. The major wildcard here is of course Joscelyn Roberson, who doesn’t have a national all-around ranking because she hasn’t vaulted enough, but is still, you know, Roberson and whatnot.

Event Top 10s

Projecting individual event qualifiers to nationals is notoriously impossible, so here we go with the top 10 ranked gymnasts in the regional on each event.

VAULT

At #8 nationally, Morgan Price is the highest-ranked vaulter in this regional whose team is not seeded to advance.

BARS

Chloe Cho is in the rare position of being the best-ranked gymnast in the regional on an event but without having to do any caveats of “if she doesn’t qualify with a team…” because Illinois didn’t make it as a team.

BEAM

Roberson and Lawrence have been the 9.950iest of the non-Oklahoma beamers in this regional, so whoever doesn’t go with a team seems the most likely choice for beam. Unless Missouri goes as a team and Roberson goes for AA, in which case the beamer…[he trailed off].

FLOOR

The individual floor qualification field is deeply deep in its deepness in this regional, with JJ Coleman, Creslyn Brose, and Joscelyn Roberson not seeded to advance with teams, and then Hannah Horton and Kennedy Griffin right there if Missouri doesn’t go through.

Team Score Trackers

Each gymnast from the conference championship lineup is listed with her NQS on that apparatus (or average if she doesn’t have an NQS), followed by what the 5-count total for the event would be using these scores.

Because the individual NQS system still uses the old method of dropping all the bad ones, these totals are very much best-case-scenario scores. What does it look like if everyone is a perfect princess who has never done anything wrong all at the exact same time?

Semifinal #1

Semifinal #2