Men’s NCAA Gymnastics Meet snapshot week 8
Stanford falls to Penn State, Fuzzy Benas returns to competition, Mark Williams gets his 600th win, Brandon Dang hits a 6.0 pommel horse routine, and JT Okada has his last meet as the California head coach.
If I’m at a meet, I use a picture I took at the meet, so sorry no AI image of a Nittany Lion biting into a tree.
Stanford isn’t as invincible as it seemed in the past. If they hit everything at the NCAA Championships, they will win. They have the highest difficulty of all the teams. But this season shows they can be out executed. Also, with 4 up 4 count increases the role of chance and decreases the advantage of depth.
Not much change in the rankings - Oklahoma and Stanford still lead the pack, followed by Ohio State, Michigan, Illinois, and Penn State, with Nebraska just outside the top six.
Taylor Burkhart of Stanford now leads the AA rankings, with Ian Sandoval of Illinois in second and Erich Upton of Air Force in third. Many of the gymnasts who are capable of big scores either haven’t competed the All Around or don’t have enough scores to be ranked. The most active all arounders are now from Dlll schools.
Event leaders as of week 8 FX - Kameron Nelson (Ohio State), PH Patty Hoopes (AF), SR Asher Hong (Stan), VT Kameron Nelson (Ohio State), PB Fred Richard (MI), HB Frederick Richard
Media reports - Gymnastics Now, Neutral Deductions
GymACT week 7 summary and week 8 summary
Rankings and videos - RoadToNationals
The Details
Please point out errors if you spot any.
PDF of full results, official school media reports, and full video replay when available are linked under the name of the meet. If I leave something out, it is usually because it wasn’t available at the time I sit down to write.
Home scores are in red. Stick bonus is included in the D score. Neutral deductions are included in the E score.
Neutral deductions for injury and non-performance-related deductions are not included in the snapshot calculations.
Margin is where the leader stood after each rotation. I corrected for teams being on different events in meets that were not head to head.
Nebraska and Oklahoma @ California
Full Results Nebraska report Cal report Oklahoma report Video
Nebraska competed the highest difficulty (by 1.8 points) but Oklahoma was able to out execute them to win by 6. Nebraska had trouble on the events that usually cause trouble - pommel horse and high bar. Fuzzy Benas competed in 4 events (FX, VT, PB, and HB). Oklahoma competed without regulars Kelton Christianson, Ignacio Yockers, Emre Dodanli, and Brigham Frentheway. Without their regular line-up, Oklahoma was still able to rack up the 10th highest score of any team so far this season. California said goodbye to JT Okada with a stellar vault rotation, scoring a 56.75 (tied with Illinois for the 6th highest of any team so far this season). Of note, Jasper Gordon-Smith returned to the Cal line-up. Jasper is capable of a Kaz double full, although he didn’t do it here.
Greenville and Army @ Illinois
Illinois has had some bad luck this season, with the loss of Samuel Phillips and Hasan Aydogdu and the need to rest Ian Sandoval. New National Team member Brandon Dang competed and hit a 6.0 pommel horse routine. I believe this is the highest pommel horse D score competed so far in the NCAA under the new code. Greenville achieved their third 309+ score in a row. Army had the highest execution of the three competitors.
Navy @ Springfield
Springfield scores its season high at this meet. Freshman Caleb Palacio is turning into a workhorse for Springfield and is ranked 7th nationally in the AA.
Stanford @ Penn State
Stanford left Colt Walker, Taylor Burkhart, and Jeremy Bischoff home to rest up from Winter Cup. They still had Olympian Asher Hong and a D total of 119, which is low for them but the 7th highest total competed this season. The only other 119+ team so far has been Ohio State. As has been pointed out by others, last season Stanford was undefeated going into the NCAA Championships. Its only 2024 loss was on 2/10/24 to “Team USA” which was just more Stanford. They have been beaten by Oklahoma, Ohio State, and now Penn State this season. Penn State had a good meet, with 11 sticks. Stanford, however, did not. They lost the most potential points on pommel horse, and had a rough high bar rotation. Their total team execution was 195.45, and they did not have the difficulty to overcome that.
William & Mary @ Simpson
William and Mary posted its second highest score of the season. William & Mary struggled last season, but are now sitting in 11th place, right behind California, so they have a shot at qualifying a full team to NCAAs. They are currently ranked second in the ECAC.
Score Stuff
Scores of 14.5 or above
Brandon Dang (Illinois) PH - 6/14.7
D scores of 5.5 or above
Brandon Dang (Illinois) PH - 6/14.7
Josh Karnes (Penn State) PH - 5.6/13.6
Asher Hong (Stanford) FX - 5.6/12.7
Asher Hong (Stanford) PH - 5.5/12.4
Asher Hong (Stanford) SR - 5.5/14.4
I will take a look at the scores for the All Japan video trials, Cottbus, and Baku and re evaluate where I’m drawing my line for “great scores”.