Men’s NCAA Gymnastics Snapshot week 5

University of Oklahoma defeats Stanford, via Dall-E3

The Big Picture

The University of Oklahoma defeats Stanford by 0.25 points to maintain the number one spot in the rankings, Patrick Hoopes becomes the first gymnast to score over 15 points on any event this NCAA season, Fred Richard scores the highest high bar score of the season (14.7) and Michigan brings on Olympians Fred Richard and Paul Juda to defeat Illinois.

Oklahoma had a record paid attendance of 2140 for its Cleveland Cubs Elementary school/Educators night meet against Stanford and Greenville. This isn’t that far off from the average attendance at women’s NCAA meets in 2024, which per RoatToNationals was 2456. Averages can be deceptive, but so can concentration on a few teams that draw 10,000+ and assume the extremes are typical. If a team can get its average around 2000, that’s around the median for women’s teams.

A common complaint about men’s NCAA gymnastics meets is that they are often blowouts (although this is somewhat less common with 4 up 4 count). For example, Oklahoma defeated Greenville 20.3 points. This has less to do with the scoring system than it does with the number of men’s NCAA teams being so small that top D1 teams compete against Dlll teams. What would happen if The Oklahoma women’s team competed against the Greenville women’s team? We can guess based on data from RoadToNationals using the difference between the average scores of the two teams. The Oklahoma women average 197.746 and the Greenville women average 186.065 - a gap of 11.319 points. 11+ points is larger than the margin of victory in most men’s NCAA meets under 4 up 4 count and would be considered a blow out.

Nebraska dropped out of the RoadToNationals rankings as they are using 3 score average and Nebraska only has two scores. I’m not sure why they don’t wait until every team has 3 scores. Nebraska has the difficulty to get up into the top 3 after this weekend if they can execute to match their difficulty.

Oklahoma and Stanford are leading the pack, and Michigan is making a move. We still haven’t seen either Stanford or Michigan at full power yet. There will be a fight between Ohio State, Illinois, Penn State, and Nebraska for those last three spots in the NCAA finals. The picture should become clearer after Nebraska has a few more meets.

40 percent of the top 10 total team E scores so far this season belong to Army. Let’s see how much of that list will be made up of Army scores when the season is over.

There is at this point about an 8-point gap between the top 7 and the rest of the pack, but with 4 up 4 count anything can happen.

This year no one but Ian Sandoval has enough scores to get an all-around ranking at this point. The Freshman from Illinois has stepped up for his team. Hopefully, we will see the return of 2024 NCAA high bar champion and Olympic Trials competitor Tate Costa soon.

The word on the street is there have been, shall we say, some little mistakes in judging. Hopefully, the coaches and the NGJA will address this. There have been some big changes to the rules, so this was almost guaranteed to happen. Some of these errors have been picked up by Japanese bloggers. Meets can be decided by less than a point, so watch out. A judging error that affects the results at conference or NCAA championships is something that the community really, really, really does not want to happen.

Rankings and video at RoadToNationals

Media Reports - Gymnastics Now, The View from Japan, Neutral Deductions, CGA power rankings - see the CGA power rankings and The View from Japan for videos of top and interesting routines.

A shoutout to Breeze Olson of GymACT for putting together exciting summaries of GymACT action every week - check it out here.

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.

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.

William and Mary @ Army

Full Results Official Army report Official William and Mary report Video

Dominating win for Army despite the difficulty advantage favoring William and Mary.

Illinois @ Michigan

Full Results Official Illinois report Official Michigan report Video

Illinois competed their lowest difficulty of the season against a Michigan team that brought their highest difficult so far, along with two Olympians. Michigan counted a vault with a 2 D score. Assuming they have at least another 4.4 in their line up, that puts their expected difficulty up there with Ohio State and Oklahoma, even without Richard and Juda competing all the events they will be expected to do.

California @ Air Force

Full results Official Cal report Official Air Force report Video

Both teams scored season highs. California was holding its own until the 5th rotation (this meet wasn’t head to head, so California was on high bar where they had problems and gave up the lead to Air Force). Erich Upton now has a Kasamatsu double full (Lopez) worth 5.2. Patrick Hoopes isn’t messing around after narrowly missing an Olympic berth. He’s primed for an individual Worlds, but some of these other pommel specialists won’t make it easy for him.

Stanford and Greenville @ Oklahoma

Full results Official Greenville report Official Stanford report Video

This one came down to the final rotation. It was a season-high for Greenville. Their official score was 308.8 as they received a 1 point neutral injury deduction because of an injury to Coby Cantu on high bar. The margins after each rotation have been corrected for what event each team was competing on. Oklahoma ended on high bar and Stanford on vault, which allowed Stanford to cut into Oklahoma’s lead, but it wasn’t enough. Oklahoma has upped their game on still rings in the last couple of years. They went from being relatively weak on that event to being one of the top teams in the country, partly due to freshman Francisco Velez Belendez of Puerto Rico. Velez Belendez is registered to compete on still rings for PUR at the Cottbus World Cup.

Penn State @ Ohio State

Full results Official Ohio State report Official Penn State report Video

Ohio State competed a bit less difficulty than they normally do, while Penn State added some to make the teams almost even in total D score, but Ohio managed to prevail in a fairly close meet.

Score Stuff

Scores of 14.5 and above.

Patrick Hoopes (Air Force) PH - 5.9/15.15

Asher Hong(Stanford) SR - 5.5/14.85

Brandon Dang(Illinois) PH - 5.7/14.8

Frederick Richard(Michigan) HB - 5.5/14.7

Ignacio Yockers (Oklahoma) PH - 5.9/14.65

Logan McKeown (Michigan) PB - 5.1/14.55

D scores of 5.5 and above

Patrick Hoopes (Air Force) - 5.9/15.15

Ignacio Yockers (Oklahoma) PH - 5.9/14.65

Kameron Nelson(Ohio State) FX - 5.8/14.15

Brandon Dang(Illinois) PH - 5.7/14.8

Josh Karnes (Penn State) HB - 5.6/13.9

Frederick Richard (Michigan) HB - 5.5/14.7

Frederick Richard (Michigan) PH - 5.5/13.3