Believe it or not, we now have just one more weekend full of non-postseason gymnastics. That slate will be kicked off with the USAG Nationals on March 29-30 (though there will still be a couple of regular season meets with UIC @ Michigan and California @ Stanford).
What that means is a B1G regular season champion will be crowned this coming weekend! We’ll get more into the shifts in those standings as we break down each meet from last weekend. First, the One Thing We Learned…
Oklahoma’s Historic Run
Okay, so we didn’t necessarily learn about this over the weekend, we were merely reminded of it. The Sooners’ victory over Navy cemented the program’s place in not just the NCAA men’s gymnastics history books, but the entire collegiate sports landscape’s history books.
I don’t care if you have 4 teams in your sport or 400. Winning 111 straight meets/games/matches is outstanding and not something that happens coincidentally. I’m confident in saying that we haven’t seen the end of Oklahoma’s streak, though regardless of when it ends, a gigantic hats off to every single gymnast and coach that has been a part of it.
Oklahoma @ Navy
Oklahoma topped Navy 416.7-400.6 in Annapolis last Saturday to secure their 111th-straight victory.
OU stood out on floor, vault and high bar but had struggles on horse, the only event they forfeited to Navy. Earning titles for the Sooners were Gage Dyer (MPSF Gymnast of the Week) on floor and high bar, Yul Moldauer on horse, rings and p-bars, as well as Matt Wenske/Vitaliy Guimaraes on vault.
Navy getting back above the 400 mark was a win in itself — they haven’t crossed that threshold since Feb. 9 (they hit 400 flat on March 1). It shows that the Midshipmen are finally starting to hit their stride in the five-up, five-count portion of the season.
Highlights for Navy included outscoring OU on horse with Jake Carlson and Ryan Orce on the podium, Lucas Beltran’s solid floor showing, and Max Gerber and Cash Buske just missing the podium.
Navy is off until the ECAC Championships on April 6. OU goes up against Cal and UIC in Berkeley on Saturday. — Alex Wittenberg
Check out full results here.
Illinois/Michigan @ Penn State
A meet with tremendous implications resulted in Michigan solidifying themselves as the favorites to win the Big Ten regular season title.
The Wolverines trailed both Penn State and Illinois through five events until a monster vault rotation (71.90) launched them to the top of the leaderboard. Kevin Penev (14.50), Marty Strech (14.40) and Jacob Moore (14.250) all stuck their vaults. Meanwhile, Anthony McCallum capped off the rotation with his signature tsuk double pike (14.85) to earn him the event title, and Michigan the win.
Cameron Bock also had a bounce back day after he struggled last week against Iowa. Bock took home both the p-bars (13.70) and high bar (14.50) titles. It is clear that Michigan is a different animal when the sophomore is in form.
This win is a big deal as Michigan now moves to 4-1 in the Big Ten and is joined by Iowa as the only one-loss teams. Iowa will face both Penn State and Minnesota this coming week and Michigan will head to Nebraska. If both teams are undefeated in their final weekend, they will each take a share of the title.
Head Coach Kurt Golder believes that his team can finish what they started. “We just have to go out to Nebraska and get the job done. Of course, the last two NCAA Championships they have beaten us, we just gotta be sharp when we go out there.”
Penn State came up just over a point and a half short of Michigan. Although the Nittany Lions are likely disappointed with the outcome, they proved they can hang with the top teams in the Big Ten. They counted just three falls in the competition, compared to Michigan’s two, and won three events on the day (PH, SR, HB).
Penn State did their usual thing on pommel horse (66.60) and we finally got a head-to-head battle between Michael Paradise and Stephen Nedoroscik. Both of them did arguably their best sets of the season but Paradise (14.70) came up just short of Nedoroscik (14.85).
We already knew what Penn State can do on pommel horse and rings, but they showed signs of life on some other events. Sam Zakutney (14.65) and Brennan Pantazis (14.60) placed second and third on vault, an event PSU has been very weak on the past few years. Senior Michael Burns had his best competition of the year, including a second place finish on high bar (14.15) to give Penn State their highest team total on that event.
The day did not go as planned for a very good Illini team, but there were still some highlights. Alex Diab seems completely untouchable on rings where he grabbed another title with a 14.75 performance. Michael Fletcher continued his tour as one of the best freshman in the country while tallying a second place finish on p-bars (13.45).
The final title on the day for Illinois was won by Clay Stephens with his 14.7 floor set. Unfortunately, Stephens suffered an apparent knee injury later in the day on vault. This is something we never want to see happen to anybody, let alone someone of his stature and character. Stephens was voted a team captain after spending just one semester with the team. Illinois will fight on and hope for a speedy recovery for their talented leader. — Ben Cooperman
Check out full results here.
Air Force @ Minnesota
Minnesota breezed past the Air Force Falcons 402.05-387.35 during a dual meet in Minneapolis on Sunday.
Coming off a big victory over Ohio State, the Gophers had a somewhat unbalanced day, with mistakes in strange spots and big highlights in others. That’s partly due to the fact that they rested some of their top guys, such as Shane Wiskus and Shaun Herzog, and gave others a crack at a lineup spot.
Air Force was keeping pace with Minnesota at the halfway point after their solid vault rotation and a measly rings performance from the Gophers. The Falcons also scored a 66.4 on rings while Minnesota put up just a 63.15, a season-low. But Minnesota’s vault juiced them back up, in large part due to freshman Garrett Kasiski’s (NCAA/B1G Rookie of the Week) stuck handspring double-front — the Gophers took over from there.
After that, the Falcons had real struggles, scoring just a 62.7 on high bar and a 60.4 on p-bars, a season-low. Highlights for Air Force included a horse and rings title for Ethan Esval and solid performances from Frankie Valentin, Lukas Texeira and Christian Kalustian.
Minnesota had team titles on every event except rings. Earning titles for Minnesota were Eric Nakamura on floor, Vitali Kan on pommels, Kasiski on vault, and Shane Wiskus on p-bars and high bar. Wiskus (NCAA/B1G Gymnast of the Week) had quite a day despite resting on a couple events, posting a 14.9 on p-bars and a 14.4 on high bar — both were season-highs for the sophomore.
The Gophers will be back to full strength next weekend when they face Penn State and Iowa at home. While the odds are long, each team will in fact be fighting for a Big Ten regular season championship.
The Falcons are home against Washington on Saturday. They’re fighting for a spot at the NCAA Championships. — Alex Wittenberg
Check out full results here.
Ohio State @ Iowa
Stay hot, Hawkeyes. On Saturday afternoon in Iowa City, the Hawkeyes enjoyed a celebration of their seniors while simultaneously taking down yet another B1G opponent in Ohio State.
With the win, Iowa has now put themselves in a position of potentially winning the B1G regular season crown if they can defeat Penn State and Minnesota this weekend and also have Michigan lose to Nebraska.
Regardless of whether that happens, Iowa has been the biggest surprise of 2019. Now — on to what happened this weekend.
Full disclosure, this wasn’t the Hawkeyes’ best performance. They endured a drop off in scoring on five of six events from the week prior while being thoroughly outdone by the Buckeyes on PH and VT. Then again, a win is a win is a win.
The highlight performance from this one came from Nick Merryman. The junior snagged a pair of event titles on PB (tied with teammate Jake Brodarzon) and HB — capitalizing on a pair of events that Ohio State severely struggled on. Merryman keeps things fairly simple, difficulty-wise, but there aren’t many gymnasts across the NCAA who are more enjoyable to watch given the cleanliness of his gymnastics.
Bennet Huang and Evan Davis also both stepped up with rock-solid days, contributing great scores on four events each.
I was quite impressed with Ohio State through four events. They limited mistakes on PH and absolutely crushed VT, claiming four of the top-five spots on the event. That rotation, specifically, was highlighted by three stuck landings coming from Joey Bonnano, Alec Yoder and Dexter Roettker.
Unfortunately, PB and HB happened. The Buckeyes bottomed out with season-low team scores on both — including a 59.95 on high bar. Certainly Yoder’s presence on the latter event would help, but even with him, there’s no team in the NCAA that can tread water while having to deal with counting a pair of 10’s anywhere in their team score.
Ohio State’s event winners were Jesse Tyndall on FX, Yoder on PH, Max Andryuschenko on SR as well as Yoder and Bonnano on VT. — Logan Bradley
Check out full results here.
Army, Springfield and Temple @ William & Mary
In what turned out being a two-team battle, Army was able to hang on to take down their host, William & Mary, by just over two points.
I think we now know that Army is just about a mid-390 team with the potential to hit 400 with a great day. All-arounders Matt Davis (79.75) and Cole Casanova (79.15) snagged the 1-2 spots for the day. Davis was able to win FX while Casanova took home a win on PB.
One Black Knight gymnast of note from the day was Erik Del Cid. The junior grabbed a pair of top-two finishes on FX and VT, including an event title on the latter event.
Army will now focus their attention on USAG Nationals and ECAC Championships, a pair of postseason meets that they should find themselves in heavy contention for.
Despite being winners of three events (FX, VT, HB), William & Mary fell short of taking down their ECAC rival. Their horse team also came to play as the Tribe locked up the top-three spots there with Spencer Schrandt finding himself in the top spot.
David Watkins continued his fantastic 2019 season with another title on SR — this one of the 13.75 variety. Now ranked no. 8 in the NCAA — Watkins will qualify with ease to NCAA’s and should have a shot at becoming an All-American. Also winning a title was David Allen on HB.
Springfield boasted a trio of top-three finishes this weekend. Those came from Stephen Lewis (AA- 3rd), Jannik Haas (PB – 3rd) and Noah Candocia (VT – 2nd).
The Temple Owls wrapped things up with a pair of top-ten event finishes themselves with Evan Salters on PB and Taden Thurber on HB. — Logan Bradley
Check out full results here.