As the nation's women's collegiate gymnastics teams go into their final meets of the regular season today, some wonder if they'll qualify for the postseason, and the best ones are apprehensive about where they'll be sent for the postseason.
The NCAA has changed its regional format for 1999, in response to past concerns about regional scoring disparity that either gave good teams poor seeding at the NCAA Championships or eliminated some good teams from lower-scored regionals.In the past, the top seven teams in each of the NCAA's five regions went to a regional within their home area. The five region winners automatically advanced to the NCAA finals, along with the seven teams from across the country that had the next-best regional scores. There were two main complaints with that system: The winner of the Northeast Regional was often a weak sister uncompetitive at nationals, and traditionally highly scored regionals like the Central got more teams to nationals than traditionally lower scored regions like the West.
Another difficulty was that a seven-team format necessitated three byes for each team in regionals, making them the longest meets in all of gymnastics.
For 1999, there are six regionals with six teams each, and the top two finishers in each region qualify for nationals, regardless of regional score. That means one more team (36) makes the postseason, but it also means all regions send only two teams. The strong old Midwest Region that included Utah, Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Iowa and Oklahoma often sent three teams, and as many as five, to nationals. No more.
Also new for '99, the nation's top 12 teams, as computed by Regional Qualifying Score (an average of a team's six best scores, two of which must be from road meets and two from home meets, with the high and low thrown out), will be distributed by the NCAA gymnastics committee to regionals by seeding rather than geographic location, somewhat the way NCAA basketball is done.
The four nonseeded regional qualifiers still go to their home regions, but powerful Georgia, Alabama, Utah and Michigan may be sent several thousand miles from home.
The No. 1-seeded team will be paired with No. 12, No. 2 with No. 11, No. 3 with No. 10 and so on, although the six region hosts stay home, so whichever seed matches up with a seeded region host must go there. Regional sites for '99 are Oregon State, Utah State, Nebraska, Louisiana State, Penn State and West Virginia.
Seeded teams paired with nonhosts of regionals will be sent to an open region by gymnastics committee draw to be held Monday. If two region hosts wind up paired --say LSU were sixth and Penn State seventh -- they would be re-paired with the next-closest-seeded nonhost like current No. 4 Michigan and No. 7 Arizona State.
The worries about this system are that some regionals, like Region 1 at Oregon State, could be jammed with highly competitive teams that didn't make the top 12 seeds because their area judges traditionally score low all season, and still only the top two finishers would qualify to nationals.
With Oregon State currently ranked 10th and Utah No. 3, the Utes would be ticketed for Corvallis. If sent there, it's possible, depending upon this weekend's final regular-season scores, that they could have to contend with 1997 NCAA-champion UCLA plus powerful Stanford and Washington as well as the Beavers, who beat Utah in Corvallis March 14.
UCLA, with early season injuries, is ranked 12th this week, meaning it would be paired somewhere with Georgia. But UCLA was 14th last week, and if it were to wind up out of the top 12 again on Sunday, it would go to its own Region 1 meet at OSU. The Bruins' and Beavers' rankings are extra tenuous because they have completed the regular season already, so their final spots depend on other teams' scores this weekend.
Region 2 host Utah State was ranked 12th a week ago, an ideal situation for the Aggies because it would have brought only No. 1 Georgia to Logan, giving USU a chance to make the NCAAs at Utah April 22-24. But this week, the Aggies dropped to a tie for 18th. If they stay out of the top 12, two seeded teams will come to Logan. The four home-region teams likely to compete at Logan include Minnesota, Denver, Iowa State or BYU, depending upon weekend scores and whether USU is seeded in the top 12.
Utah will most likely be sent to either Oregon State, Logan or West Virginia, according to current rankings. Competition at 20th-ranked West Virginia could be the easiest, including home-region teams like No. 25 North Carolina State and unranked Towson, George Washington or North Carolina, none of whom have ever been gymnastics powers.
To end the regular season, Utah hosts BYU, USU is at the Big West Championships at Fullerton and Southern Utah is at Texas Woman's University in Denton, all on Saturday.