2024 Men’s Team NCAA Championships by the numbers
Stanford 5 Peat
A Numerical Guide to each rotation of the 2024 men’s NCAA Championships.
(Arranged in the order the meet actually happened, unlike the score sheets).
Rotation 1
Stanford traditionally likes to start on vault, which they do in Columbus to start the competition with a commanding lead and a season-high score. Oklahoma in second with a good floor rotation, Michigan is in third with a good score on pommels despite a fall, Illinois in fourth with its usual score on rings, Ohio State in fifth after high bar (usually a low-scoring event for everyone), Nebraska in sixth with some work to do after parallel bars.
Rotation 2
Stanford widens its lead to 6.601 points after a massive 72.199 on parallel bars. Illinois moves 0.134 ahead of Oklahoma after a big vault rotation and a fall on pommel from Oklahoma. Michigan in fourth after rings, Nebraska moves ahead of Ohio State to take fifth.
Rotation 3
Stanford goes to high bar, its weakest event, while Michigan moves to vault (usually the highest scoring event). Stanford maintains its lead, but Michigan moves into second place after vaulting, cutting Stanford’s lead to 2.034 points. Michigan is now 3.867 points ahead of Illinois (who remains in third place after parallel bars). Oklahoma trails Illinois by 0.153 points after rings (Oklahoma’s weakest event). Nebraska in fifth by 4.03 points, Ohio State is in sixth.
Rotation 4
Stanford maintains its lead after floor, but Michigan has cut into Stanford’s lead after a big parallel bar rotation (and high bar bringing Stanford back a little closer to the rest of the field), and now trails Stanford by just 0.538 points. After a season-high vault rotation, Oklahoma has moved into third place and put some distance between itself and fourth-place Illinois. Nebraska in fifth by 2.56 points with some work to do after pommels, Ohio State back from Nebraska by 7.071 points.
Rotation 5
Stanford begins to pull away again to lead Michigan by 5.969 points after a massive season high of 72.065 on pommels, and a troubled high bar rotation for Michigan. Oklahoma is able to move to within 0.6 points of Michigan. Illinois in fourth 4.097 points, Nebraska in fifth 4.695 behind Illinois, Ohio State still in sixth after some trouble on vault.
Rotation 6 and final results
It’s all over but the shouting as Stanford moves to rings, where they are number one in the country. Barring a rings disaster (and those rarely happen), no one is going to catch them. Stanford finishes with a score of 425.234 (second highest of the year after Michigan’s regular season home score of 425.5), to win by 5.635 points. Michigan does well on floor and finishes second.
Time and chance catch Oklahoma on high bar. Oklahoma came into this competition number one in the country on high bar, but finish with a score 64.699, of one of their lower scores this season. Nebraska has a huge vault rotation to pass up Illinois and take fourth by 0.768 points as Illinois has trouble on pommel horse. Ohio State finishes in sixth.
Stanford competed its highest difficulty of the season (166.8) and combined that with its highest execution of the season ( hitting 30 out of 30 routines, with an average E score of 8.617.) They didn’t always hit everything during the season, but they put it all together in Columbus. Many times in the past Stanford had not come into the championships ranked first, but pulled out the win. They tend to save the best for last.
Michigan would have had a tough time catching Stanford based on their relative level of difficulty. It was doable if Michigan had the meet of their lives and Stanford gave them some help, which is not what happened.
Oklahoma was in a similar situation with regards to Michigan, but Oklahoma had awful luck on high bar. Interestingly, the other teams that had the most trouble with high bar were Stanford and Michigan, but the latter two had enough difficulty to absorb it.
Best execution of the meet was from Illinois, who averaged an 8.704 E score despite some mistakes.
Final Thoughts
High bar and vault were key events as far as figuring out where teams were during the meet and where they might possibly end up. Really big swings happened on both of these events. At this meet, vault was the highest scoring event (team average 72,092) and high bar was the lowest (66.626).
Covelli Center is a great place to have this meet. The size is right for the level of attendance. There was also free refills on soda and the best pretzels I’ve had in a sports arena outside Germany.
Full replay here.
Full results here