We’re already five weeks into the 2016 NCAA season, which is mind-blowingly crazy. The first month flew by and now we’re almost halfway to postseason!

But before we get ahead of ourselves, there’s another busy weekend coming up! It’s extending all the way to Tuesday, so that’s five full days of gym to get excited about beginning on Friday night with our traditional SEC battles.

No. 1 Florida travels to No. 11 Georgia to start. The Gators’ average is over half a point higher than the Gym Dogs’ season high, so don’t expect it to be a close battle…though I do hope Georgia puts up a big fight and holds onto the ground they gained with their beam victory last week. As it turns out, the meet will be great practice for senior Brittany Rogers, who will leave for Nova Scotia shortly after to compete an exhibition routine at Elite Canada on Sunday.

No. 4 Alabama hosts No. 25 Kentucky and No. 6 LSU hosts No. 8 Arkansas, both at 8:30 pm on the east coast. The Bama meet should be an easy win for the Crimson Tide, who just reached their season high at Florida last week, while LSU will hope to finally break 197 after counting falls in several of their meets so far this season as they continue to find lineups that work. At home, they should have a relatively easy time beating the Gymbacks, but Arkansas already upset one conference rival on the road this year and they easily win for consistency. If the Lady Tigers make mistakes, it could be anyone’s game.

No. 2 Oklahoma will compete in a quad meet hosted by No. 57 Texas Woman’s and also featuring No. 10 Auburn and No. 56 Illinois State. This meet will be like practice for the Sooners, who will make the short drive down I-35 for the meet, and while Auburn should pull in a close second, they do have some adversity to fight after losing freshmen A’Miracal Phillips and Emma Engler to injury last week, which means seeing two replacement athletes up on vault. It’s never an easy task, but Utah persevered last week and it’ll be interesting to see if the Tigers can do the same. The real battle here will be between the closely-ranked D2 host squad from TWU and D1 Illinois State. Illinois State’s scoring potential is a little greater, but TWU has been the more consistent team so far and just might be able to notch a victory.

Also on Friday, we’ll see No. 9 Boise State at No. 24 Southern Utah in an MRGC rivalry meet, No. 16 Missouri hosting an all-state triad, also featuring No. 52 Southeast Missouri as well as the D2 gymnasts from No. 44 Lindenwood, and No. 23 West Virginia making an appearance at Big 12 foe No. 35 Iowa State.

The big meet on Saturday will be the Pac-12 showdown between No. 5 UCLA and No. 7 Utah. Both teams have been hit or miss thus far in 2016, with this past Monday seeing a disappointing finish for the Bruins in Berkeley as well as a triumphant victory for the Utes at home with the injured Kari Lee on the sidelines. They’re pretty evenly matched, though UCLA always tends to perform better at home, so I’d give it to them if I had to pick.

No. 13 Denver will host No. 30 Utah State in the evening, No. 14 Nebraska will travel to No. 27 Iowa, and there should be a super close Big Ten battle between No. 18 Minnesota and No. 19 Illinois in Minneapolis. Neither of these two teams has hit quite where they’re capable of hitting yet in 2016, but a tight rivalry meet could be just the thing they need to light the spark.

No. 2 Oklahoma competes a second time on Sunday, hosting No. 23 West Virginia in another easy but important meet, as the Sooners will work not so much on the win but on building their own scores to try to overtake Florida in the rankings.

Also on Sunday, new EAGL fan favorites No. 17 George Washington and No. 22 New Hampshire will also compete. GWU travels to a triad hosted by No. 39 Kent State alongside No. 42 Northern Illinois while UNH – the third-best beam program in the country – will host a quad featuring No. 46 Bridgeport, No. 47 Towson, and No. 58 Brown.

Monday is when we’ll see No. 3 Michigan back in action, hosting No. 26 Eastern Michigan and No. 36 Maryland. Otherwise, it’s a Pac-12 Monday Night Gymnastics marathon, beginning with No. 12 Stanford hosting No. 49 Arizona State in what should be an easy meet for them after a tough fourth place finish at Metroplex last weekend. Then No. 15 Oregon State will host No. 29 Washington, with UDub coming off of a big upset against Stanford and OSU showing great work in their defeat of Arizona State last weekend.

But the best of these should be the super-closely ranked conference rivals No. 20 Arizona and No. 21 Cal, which will face off in Berkeley. Cal is coming off of a huge win against UCLA, so that combined with their home team advantage and Arizona’s recent struggles at Utah should make for a very strong outing. Also, if you watch Grey’s Anatomy at all, get very excited because from here on out I will only refer to this meet as “Callie + Arizona 4Eva.”

The uber-long weekend wraps up Tuesday with a D3 WIAC match-up between No. 77 Winona State and No. 78 UW-Oshkosh. If you’ve never watched a D3 meet before because your focus is elsewhere, we’ll be sure to scrounge for any video because this would be the perfect chance to get to know a couple of teams beyond your regular scope of gymnastics enjoyment.

All meets below are listed in EST, and we’ll update links to live stats and streams as soon as they become available.

Article by Lauren Hopkins
Photo thanks to Cal Gymnastics