ASU Gymnastics: Sun Devils face Utah, others in Pac-12 Championship

(Photo: Susan Wong/WCSN)

Arizona State Gymnastics is set for the Pac-12 Conference Championships in West Valley City, Utah on Saturday.

The Sun Devils are the No. 4 seed, meaning they will compete in the night session as part of the top four teams. With this ranking, the Sun Devils will compete against No. 1 seed and defending conference champions Utah, No. 2 seed California and No. 3 seed Oregon State. Seeding is based on National Qualifying Score (NQS) scoring, and nationally, Utah is ranked No. 4, California is No. 10 and Oregon State is No. 13.

The meet will see eight teams divided into two groups by NQS scoring – the top four will compete in the night session, while the remaining four teams compete during the day in session one. Even though the teams don’t directly compete against each other, the team with the highest score wins – it does not matter if it comes from a session one team or a session two team.

Looking back on the season, the Sun Devils are 1-2 against the teams they will face on Saturday. They most recently met California on Feb. 20, where they ended the Golden Bears’ winning streak, beating them 197.800-195.475. That was coincidentally the highest score the Sun Devils have received all season.

With regard to Utah and Oregon State, the Sun Devils faced then-No. 2 Utah for their second meet of the year. The Sun Devils lost 197.400 to 196.100 to the Utes in Utah. ASU then faced Washington before heading to Oregon State.

At that time, Oregon State was ranked No. 13, and ASU was No. 21. The Sun Devils ended up falling 197.400 to 196.100.

If the competition wasn’t challenging enough, ASU will be starting on the floor – its worst event. The Sun Devils are ranked nationally in the top-20 for every other event, but the floor is where they rank No. 35. They do move to their best event after that in vault, but the Sun Devils will likely be playing catch-up and will need high scores.

Utah will start on its third-best event, vault, where they rank No. 5 nationally. The Golden Bears will begin on their second-best event in bars, where they are No. 10 in the nation. The Beavers start on the beam, their best event, where they are also No. 9 nationally.

Utah’s top two events are beam and floor, where they rank No. 1 and No. 2, respectively. On its worst event, bars, they are still No. 6 nationally.

Besides being No. 9 on beam, Oregon State is No. 10 on vault, No. 16 on the floor and No. 25 on bars. Cal’s best event is beam, where they are ranked No. 8 nationally. Following that is the bars, then they are ranked No. 13 and 14 nationally on vault and floor, respectively.

The Sun Devils will face not one but two Olympians on Saturday night: Utah freshman Grace McCallum is ranked No. 7 nationally and Oregon State’s Jade Carey is the No. 1 gymnast in the nation.

Along with McCallum, Utah’s second-best gymnast is junior Maile O’Keefe. She has a total score of 287.125, which is 135.900 points behind McCallum, whose total score is 423.025.

Utah has two events with scores of 10.000 this year. Three different individuals have scored 10s on bars: McCallum, O’Keefe and freshman Sage Thompson. The second event is on the beam, where they have seen 10s from O’Keefe and senior Cristal Isa.

The Beavers head into championship weekend off two wins and a loss last week at the Denver dual meet. Carey leads Oregon State with 357.875 total points. Carey also has the Beavers only score of 10 this year. One came on vault – which came against ASU – and the second on floor. Behind Carey is senior Madi Dagen, who has a total overall score of 352.000.

The Golden Bears finished their season with a loss, a second place finish and a win. Losing to then-No. 17 UCLA the week after facing ASU, they finished second at a tri-meet hosted by No. 16 Ohio State. Cal finished out the year with a home win over No. 23 Iowa.

The top three gymnasts for California haven’t changed much since ASU saw it three weeks ago. Junior Nevaeh DeSouza is now atop the team with 393.225 total points. Behind her is senior Maya Bordas with 393.050 points, and sophomore Andi Li, who was atop the team three weeks ago, is now third with 354.050 points.