LSU performance and judging are out of our control. Despite mistakes, the improvement this week was significant. I will take that all day long. After this environment the girls know clearly what they have in front of them. I have confidence they will embrace the challenges!
All judging aside, we have nothing to blame but our uncharacteristically bad bars rotation last night. If we do even average on the bars, we win going away. That's encouraging to me because I expect we'll get that fixed. I do wonder about our bars rotation though. I wonder if Riley is going to return to form. I love that Jenny is giving her a chance, but this has to be answered before we get deeper into the schedule. Same with Skye. IMO, her routines look stronger and more confident than Riley's. Hopefully she'll get her landings worked out. I still can't believe she came back from an achilles so quickly. We did better on bars in the first competition....Sloane isn't going to fall every week, but do we have any other (better) options on bars? All in all, I am encouraged by last night's result. Good road score...especially in week 2...and especially considering the bars scores. Looks like once things settle, we'll be in the mix at the end!
Riley was one of the top Bars gymnasts in the nation before her injuries. She continues to struggle to find her form, her confidence and her landings. Last night, Riley missed both handstands by over-extending them, and was lucky she was able to save them. Last week she fell to her knees on her landing. How many more chances does CJR give her before pulling Riley from the lineup?
Sloane had too much adrenaline and overshot the lower bar. When she repeated it, Sloane was perfect. If we had an extra meet to prepare for this high stakes SEC sell-out early season road meet that had so much SEC and national significance... Skye's routine has a high level of difficulty and a potential high scores. She, too had too much adrenaline and looked a little rushed.An extra meet would've....But the sky's the limit for Skye! (See what I did there? Skye and sky? Aren't I clever...) Anya added an element to her routine and struggled with it. Her handstand was just a little short. Wong was a little off all night. But there's no reason to panic. We have a strong Bar lineup that just needs more meets under them. The biggest uncertainty being Riley. If she starts hitting her routine will be a big plus. But we have talented gymnasts who can take Riley's spot if she doesn't. Vault and Floor made heaps of improvement, and will only get better. And Beam is queen! We were so cool and relaxed on Beam last night in a highly pressured environment in front of a large opposing Gator-hating crowd when the meet was on the line. Jenny used 11 gymnasts with 3 AAs. It shows the depth of the team and the ability to rest and rotate gymnasts when needed throughout the season.
Gymnastics is a unique sport. You can peak too early. The routines need to be paced so they peak in April. Bars will sort out. The rest was great.
Looks like Avery Neff of Utah sustained a serious injury to ankle on floor exercise yesterday. Hope not as serious as appears.
It appears Neff was injured during her floor routine. Here's what the live blogger wrote: Neff (UTAH): Front full + front double and takes a slightly uncontrolled step forward, but who cares. That was awesome. RO + back 2.5 and opens up perfectly, taking a controlled step forward. Switch straddle + wolf full, but didnt fully make it around. Dismounts with a Rudi and tries to go for a LOSO but looks like she injured something! She immediately grabbed onto her foot when landed. She was just carried out of the arena. 9.350 On reddit, Avery's sister said both ankles sprained, including one ankle possibly broken. This is not an official statement by the school, but the injury appears to be season-ending. Gator nation is all too familiar with season-ending injuries to key student-athletes. Even when these types of injuries are from our biggest rivals, they are college student-athletes and I don't like to see this happen. The bad news is this will put in doubt Utah's streak of advancing to at least the NCAA semis every year, the only school who has achieved this. On the bright side, Avery will be eligible to red-shirt.
I didn't realize that Sloane scored 9.95 twice-on Floor and on Beam. The fall on Bars must've fired her up. Way to go Sloane!
More tomorrow, but I have issues with scoring for Anya and Selena on bars and Aleah Finnigan on floor.
Hope you're feeling better. IMO, I would add Finnegan on bars, and Ballard on Beam, relative to Cohen who got the same score on Beam. And I don't think it's a world vs. UF thing. It's LSU bias when they are at home. I know it happens everywhere, but they seem to be the worst.
Yeah, we noticed the same thing. She has definitely matured as an athlete. We have seen young Sloane fall apart after a poor result. She definitely stepped up and helped carry us the rest of the way.
I agree with you on the scoring for the above routines, but I feel that the most egregious score was Kaliya Lincoln’s score on vault. She received a 9.725 when she had at the very minimum 0.4 deduction on her landing alone. The vault in the air was very good, but she had two significant steps/hops on her landing. The first one was a 0.3 deduction and the second a 0.2. Even if the judges decided on a 0.4 deduction, the starting score for the vault to be judged from was a 9.6. With all the other scores from the meet staying the same, we would have won the meet if that vault had been judged even halfway correctly.
When Sloane missed bars I told my friend “Sloane is going to kill it the rest of the meet.” That is her usual pattern. She always recovers strong.
I am so over LSU's ongoing celebration and all the interviews with their gymnasts talking about their title. LSU had the "hanging the banner" celebration meet, then giving out championship rings before the Florida meet. There were multiple segments on them winning the title during the Gator meet that I turned off the volume during breaks because I knew there would be another interview with one of their gymnasts giggling about the title, or a segment on the team winning the NCAA, or how proud Jay Clark was, blah blah blah.... It is 1 title that you won. You are not a dynasty nor part of one. Come back after winning 3-in-a-row and tell us how proud and how happy blah blah blah. Everybody knows you only won because of Oklahoma's historic flop. Ok, I feel a little better now.
Didn’t watch the meet but tapped it. Started to watch it but knowing the result and seeing the love fest for LSU nauseated me so much that I quit watching after just a few minutes. But gotta say that this post made me feel much better. Still think that Jenny is gonna do it again and by that I mean win the SEC and just maybe the national title.
