The Alabama gymnastics team officially ends the 2019 season ranked 12th in the nation, finishing outside the top 10 for the first time since 1982. Final rankings were released as soon as the 2019 NCAA Women’s Gymnastics Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, wrapped up last Saturday.
Oklahoma closed out the year undefeated and won its fourth championship title with a 198.338 on the final night of competition in the Fort Worth Convention Center. LSU was second with a 197.825, while reigning NCAA champion UCLA wound up third with a 197.537. Denver rounded out the final four teams in fourth with a 197.
Michigan, Oregon State, Utah and Georgia then went down in order after being eliminated after semifinals.
Alabama was nixed from the bracket after it failed to advance out of the NCAA Ann Arbor Regional in Michigan, placing third. Only the top two teams moved on. That round was the equivalency of a Sweet 16.
This was the first year of the new postseason format. Quad meets determined everything besides the very first round, which was a play-in between the bottom two seeds at each regional.
“I like the speed of the meet,” UA coach Dana Duckworth said last week. “I like not having the byes. I think that we were told that this format would bring you live television, and I think that if you’re going to have two regionals in the country with live TV, the other two regionals need to be publicized as well – live with four events, the found individual events and things like that.”
The NCAA Ann Arbor Regional was only available online at FloGymnastics.com, which costs money. The NCAA Corvallis (Oregon) Regional was live streamed by host Oregon State itself. But the NCAA Athens (Georgia) Regional and the NCAA Baton Rouge (Louisiana) Regional offered their two full days on SEC Network+.
NCAA semifinals were then on ESPNU and ESPN2, and the championship was on ESPNU.
