Utah Utes gymnastics notebook: Utes drop 2 places in national rankings

Published: Tuesday, March 23 2010 1:23 a.m. MDT

Summary

Because it did not do especially well in its Feb. 26 meet at BYU, the Utah gymnastics team's ratings fate was somewhat sealed, and even though the Utes had their best road score of the season last Friday at Florida, they dropped two spots in the rankings this week.

SALT LAKE CITY — Because it did not do especially well in its Feb. 26 meet at BYU, the Utah gymnastics team's ratings fate was somewhat sealed, and even though the Utes had their best road score of the season last Friday at Florida, they dropped two spots in the rankings this week.

The No. 11 spot that the Utes now occupy ties with earlier in the year as the lowest ranking a Ute team has ever had, and with only Friday's home meet with BYU left before the postseason, there is little Utah can do to improve its standing.

The rankings determine the fields for the NCAA regionals on April 10.

Utah will be host of the North Central Regional.

"If nobody else improved (this week), and we improved as much as we could (this Friday), the highest we could get is ninth," surmised Ute coach Greg Marsden, whose team was ranked ninth for four straight weeks., Feb. 22-March 15.

"When we didn't help ourselves much down at BYU (scoring 195.925 on Feb. 26), we kind of did ourselves in because we were locked into our away scores (for the rankings)."

If Utah were to finish the regular season with this No. 11 ranking, it would be in the regional on the Huntsman Center floor with the No. 2 team (currently Oklahoma) and another seeded team, which at this point could be No. 13 Illinois, No. 15 Auburn or possibly No. 16 Iowa State. The top 18 teams are seeded, with three going to each of the six regionals as determined by an "S" curve, with Nos. 1, 12 and 13 supposed to be grouped together, Nos. 2, 11 and 14, Nos. 3, 10 and 15 and so on. But this is changed by the regional hosts because they get to stay home. The current No. 14 team, Missouri, is a host and therefore wouldn't be sent to Utah, as the formula calls for, so it would be switched, with another team sent to Utah. Other regional hosts are current No. 3 UCLA, No. 17 Penn State, No. 18 Kentucky and No. 33 West Virginia. Depending upon the final rankings, there will be some juggling on the "S" curve.

The top two finishers from each regional advance to the 2010 NCAA championships at Florida April 22-24.

If Utah could move up to No. 10 or even No. 9, it could get lowered-seeded teams for competition — No. 9 would currently draw No. 4 Florida and No. 16 Iowa State.