It’s been a decade since the Michigan men’s gymnastics team won the national championship. And after finishing second last year, it might have its best shot to earn the title again this year.
On Tuesday, the Wolverines qualified for the NCAA Championship as the third-ranked team with a national qualifying average of 413.038. While Michigan holds the highest overall team meet score in the NCAA this season of 425.500, it just recently moved up the rankings. All but three schools — Army, William and Mary and Simpson — qualified for the championship.
Gymnastics is a very individual sport, so a team’s performance isn’t reliant on what other teams do. But Michigan isn’t the highest ranked team in the country and it’s only recently moved into third place. While the Wolverines have a star-studded squad, they have bigger competition that they will need to beat on their way to reaching the peak and finally regaining the national title.
No. 1 Stanford
The Wolverines know the Cardinal are their most challenging opponent, and for good reason. The four time defending national champions are the first-ranked team in the country.
“We know it’s a challenge,” Michigan coach Yuan Xiao told The Michigan Daily. “But we tell our guys … (beating) Stanford is our goal.”
Stanford is stacked with talent — the Cardinal have five gymnasts on the USA Gymnastics National Team, comprising nearly one-third of the national roster. Stanford’s stars are a crucial part of its team and have been a critical part of its success.
The Cardinal’s vault rotation has been a strength this season, and they’ve struggled mightily with high bar. But they’ve steadily improved over the last few weeks of the season, reaching their second highest scores of the season in many events as they won the Mountain Pacific Championship for the third straight time. Stanford enters the championship with momentum behind it, its stars healthy and four consecutive national titles to defend — and it looks poised to add a fifth to its collection.
No. 2 Oklahoma
Oklahoma is looking to get back to glory after it won four straight national championships from 2015 to 2018 — ending Michigan’s two-year run — before Stanford ended its streak. And the Sooners will be going up against a familiar face, as Xiao was a coach at Oklahoma for five years, including three national titles with the program.
“I expect the team to perform,” Xiao said. “As far as I know, they have a phenomenal team, and (Oklahoma) coach Mark Williams is a great coach. For me personally, I really learned a lot from that program. … It’s my honor.”
Oklahoma has fewer big-name stars than Michigan or Stanford, but it does have Fuzzy Benas, one of the most talented gymnasts on Team USA’s roster. And what the Sooners lack in sheer star power, they make up for with their talented lineup depth.
Oklahoma’s strength all year has been their consistency, especially on vault, where its range of scores is only 1.900 and its highest score is third in the country. But the Sooners also have the lowest parallel bars and rings scores of the top four teams, and their high bar has been very inconsistent. They’ve steadily improved throughout the season, however, and they came second at the MPSF championship with 418.400 to Stanford’s 422.700 and won a number of awards. Oklahoma battled with Stanford all season for the first seed, and it’s ready to earn that ranking back.
No. 4 Illinois
The fourth-ranked Fighting Illini, Michigan’s conference foe, are back after defeating Michigan earlier in the regular season but failing to do so in the Big Ten Championship. Illinois has no gymnasts on the national team roster, but its team is rock-solid and it’s been a force to be reckoned with throughout this season. The Illini will be without one of their veterans Evan Manivong, who tore his ACL on the individual floor event at the Big Ten Championship. Yet they’ll still have freshman phenom Brandon Dang and sophomore Tate Costa, both of whom have earned Big Ten Freshman of the Week honors this season.
Illinois has been a model of consistency throughout the year. The differences between its highest and lowest scores on nearly every event fall between three and six points, and its scores have risen throughout the season. The Illini’s biggest weakness is their high bar, which has the lowest score of the top four teams at 61.100, and, like Oklahoma, they don’t have a single highest score among the top four teams on any event, which proved costly during the Big Ten Championship.
If it can overcome this obstacle, Illinois has the ability to compete at the same level as its highly-ranked counterparts, making them a dark horse candidate. The Illini have depth and consistency, and it’s unwise to count them out.
Despite the high level of competition throughout the nation, the Wolverines have a chance at the national title, and they enter the competition hot off a fourth-consecutive Big Ten Championship. With two members of the national team, graduate student Paul Juda and sophomore Fred Richard, as well as senior development team member sophomore Landen Blixt, the Wolverines have a mixture of stars and depth. Talented gymnasts like senior Javier Alfonso and graduate student Crew Bold round out Michigan’s lineup with a high level of talent.
The Wolverines’ high bar is among the best in the country and they are strong on vault and parallel bars as well. Michigan’s problem all season, though, has been its consistency and its ability to perform the same routines in the same way from week to week, perhaps best exemplified by the Wolverines also holding the lowest score on floor of the top four teams.
While they’ve steadily improved on floor this season, the same cannot be said of their pommel horse routines, the event on which they will begin qualification at nationals. Michigan’s scores on the event have jumped all over the place this season and are inconsistent from week to week. It’s been a source of frustration for Xiao, who knows his team has the ability to perform at an NCAA-winning level, but also knows it hasn’t really shown that.
“We have (a) pretty good team on pommel horse, so we have to show we aren’t the bad team,” Xiao said. “They did a good job inside the gym. Now, they just have to do the same thing at competition.”
The Wolverines’ record hasn’t been spotless this season, but they have the talent to win the tournament. Their program record score of 425.500 proves it. It’s higher than any other team’s highest score by nearly three points, and the team with that next highest score is No. 1 Stanford, whose NCAA title-clinching score last year was 422.458. Michigan also holds the highest scores on vault, floor, and parallel bars of the top four teams. And after coming so close last year as the underdogs, the Wolverines are hungry to prove that they are the best team in the country.
It’s been a decade since this program has lifted the NCAA trophy, and this year might just be its best chance to win it. But to do that, the Wolverines have to get past the giants that have previously beaten them. They beat one of them when they defeated Oklahoma earlier this season. Now it’s time to see if Michigan can put Illinois to bed for good and finally overcome Stanford’s stars to reach that elusive title.