That’s my prediction. Barring an earthquake, the favourites will win tonight at home.
UPDATE: An earthquake did rock Stanford. An earthquake called the Oklahoma Sooners. Stanford finished in second place, upset by OU.
The competition is only just beginning here in San Jose. It’s already getting LOUD.
This Stanford team has everything. One of the deepest College teams of all-time, perhpas. And they know it. One of their mottos for 2008 is “The Start of a Fearsome Reign.”
This really could be the start of a dynasty.
To outpoint Stanford one the 5 other teams will need a BEST performance of the year, I think.
Cal Berkeley Head Coach Barry Weiner said last night that his team is going to “let it all hang out”.
Their star, Tim McNeill, who competed only Pommels in preliminaries due to back pain, is going back into the line-up today. Cal has the green light to throw their best stuff. Their going to need it to have a chance.
The best coverage of the Men’s NCAA Championships, by the way, so far has been on Inside Gymnastics:
No. 1 Stanford easily led all qualifiers on Thursday, with solid, polished performances. (They didn’t count a miss all evening.) Redshirt junior Sho Nakamori, who contributed a near perfect high bar routine, among other super-clean sets, led the all-around standings with a 90.35, his highest all-around total ever. Teammate David Sender also did the all-around for an 89.6, including a 16.2 vault (very high, but big step forward).
Cardinal coach Thom Glielmi elected to use the qualifying competition as a dress rehearsal for finals, going with the same line-up he plans for this evening. “This is the first time [this season] we went with the full line-up,†he said. “Some of the individual routines weren’t as sharp as we have had in previous meets, but the depth of our line-up, and the difficulty that the team brings, [still allowed us] to break our team’s personal [scoring] record.â€
Overall, Stanford earned a whopping 363.85, their highest score of the season, while Illinois surprised some with a near-perfect night for second overall (359.3), including a meet-high pommels performance from freshman Daniel Ribeiro who earned a 15.7, more than a point better than any athlete in session one. …
read more … Inside Gymnastics
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