All Blue Sticks It

We're still buzzing from the National Championship Game here at All Blue. If you haven't read it yet, I'm very pleased with last week's column on my trip to the game. Part 2 of the Winter Preview will be coming later this week, in the meantime, I had enough things I wanted to talk about that wouldn't make sense for a preview. Happy Monday.

All Blue Stickers

If you follow me on Twitter you may be aware I have stickers. If you are here because I gave you one at or around the National Championship Game, hi! Thanks!

If you want a sticker, here's how to get one:

• Join All Blue as a paid member. Annual subscriptions are $10, monthly subscriptions are $1. None of my content is paywalled, subscribing just helps me keep the lights on, but hey, you get a sticker. If you are already a paid subscriber or you subscribe at any time going forward, I'll send an email this week asking where to send your sticker.
• Put $2 in my tip jar. I mean I'm not going to stop you from putting more in there but if you send $2 with your address in the note I'll send you a sticker.

We are VERY close to having enough paid subscribers that I will break even on hosting fees in Year 1. That was the milestone I was hoping to reach, and I'm very proud to be within a couple of annual subscriptions of getting there.

Ok content about sports now.

Women's Gymnastics Bounces Back at Home

Things were more uneven than the Wolverines may have hoped at the Mean Girls Super 16 in Las Vegas. Preseason #6 Michigan finished fourth in their quad, behind #1 Oklahoma, #9 Kentucky, and #11 Michigan State. In the process they put up a 195.875, after having gone the entire 2023 season without finishing a meet under 197 (exhibition excepted).

The commentators noted that scores seemed low event-wide, and certainly it did seem like Michigan was consistently scoring at least .05 lower than the commentators predicted, so was everyone else. (A mea culpa to my bagging on this event's broadcast strategy in the preview. I stand by my general points about not announcing the streaming home until the day before and the fact that Paramount sponsored this event but did not stream it, but the Youtube broadcast itself was pretty solid. Not perfect, but better than the average B1G+ broadcast.)

I'm not going to dwell too much on the scores in Vegas, it seemed Michigan was overcommitting, making it difficult to stick landings. Other than a strong Uneven Bars rotation, with three 9.900's from Gabby Wilson, Carly Bauman, and Sierra Brooks, it just wasn't their night. Going into Beam as the final rotation of the night, the Wolverines would need a big score to keep hopes of finishing third (ahead of MSU) alive. Unfortunately, a fall from Jacey Vore meant that no one else could afford any mistakes, but Michigan ended up counting two sub-9.600 scores. (As a reminder: in women's gymnastics six gymnasts compete but you drop your low score, so when you say "they had to count a 9.6", you mean that they got an unideal score but because it was not their low score they could not drop it.)

Fortunately, winning and losing is simply not as important as your score progression throughout the season. This isn't quite true once we get into Big Ten play, but ultimately the committee is unlikely to hold finishing fourth against Michigan as long as they bounce back. And in their home opener against Stanford, bounce back they did.

The story of the Stanford meet is Sierra Brooks. Brooks broke a school record for all-around, compiling a 39.850. That includes a perfect 10 on her floor routine, plus 9.975s on both vault and beam. (For the math-challenged, that means she got a 9.900 on bars.)

Everyone else looked better too. After a 49.50 on the floor in Vegas, Michigan dropped Gabby Wilson's 9.850, with everyone else scoring 9.9 or above. Jenna Mulligan improved 0.325 over her Vegas performance, with a 9.925. Michigan only counted one score under 9.8 all night. This was the exact meet they needed to remind everyone that they're still Michigan fergodsakes.

Michigan was aided by Stanford making it clear early in the night that they were not going to be a factor in this meet after only using five gymnasts on bars, their opening rotation. Once one of those gymnasts struggled quite a bit and they had to count the score, Michigan spent most of this meet a full two points ahead of Stanford. Barring calamity, it was never going to be a close meet. Instead of calamity, Michigan took advantage of the near-sure win, looking loose and scoring big.

I think the version of Michigan we will see going forward will look more like the Stanford meet than the Vegas meet, but clearly there's work to do, especially from some of the new contributors. Michigan will open the Big Ten season at Ohio State this Sunday.

See the headline was a pun about how I made stickers but also about how this newsletter is mostly about gymnastics I thought it was funny

Emina Bektas Down Under

After cracking the world top 100 for the first time in her career late last season, 2015 alum Emina Bektas qualified directly to the main draw for the Australian Open. It was her third appearance in a Grand Slam main draw, but at both the Aussie Open and Wimbledon in 2022, she had to win her qualifying matches to get there.

I can't say this with 100% confidence, but it is my belief Bektas is the first Wolverine woman to ever qualify directly to a Grand Slam singles main draw. On the men's side, it has not been done since Peter Fleming qualified to the Aussie Open in 1983. (Did you know that a Wolverine was John McEnroe's doubles partner for most of his career? Fleming and McEnroe won 7 Slams together, 4 Wimbledons and 3 US Opens.)

Unfortunately her stay in the tournament was short, taking a 6-4, 6-4 loss to Kamilla Rakhimova. Still, she sits in 89th place in the WTA live rankings, with the top 104 qualifying directly to the main draw at the French Open. Certainly we'll have to keep an eye on her in the tournaments between the AO and Roland Garros, but she'll have a good chance to avoid the qualifying rounds once again.

[NBC Olympics Theme Song Plays] Abby Tamer and USA Field Hockey

We love the Olympics at All Blue and we especially love when Wolverines are playing at weird off times in the calendar so we have something to obsess over for a few days. Right now in Ranchi, India, the United States Women's National Field Hockey team are making their last attempt at qualifying for the 2024 Olympics, and Michigan junior Abby Tamer has already made her mark.

Tamer scored the only goal in the US' opener against host India, with her 16th minute strike holding up for a 1-0 US win.

The US followed up the win over India with a 2-0 win over Italy, where Tamer started once again. They have one match left in group play, against 1-1 New Zealand. Based on world rankings the Kiwis are the nominal favorite (#9 v. #15), but the US wins the group with a draw or better. It is likely but not certain that they advance as the group's second place team with a loss to New Zealand, and there are even "lose and win the group" scenarios on the table if the US loses 1-0 (or 2-1 or 3-2 or you get it).

Following group play, they'll play a semi-final against probably Japan or Germany, with both semi-final winners qualifying for the Olympics. A loss in the semis sends them to the third place match, where a final Olympic berth will be on the line.

The match against New Zealand is Tuesday at 6:45am on CBS Sports Network. The medal round will be Thursday and Friday, and presumably will also be on CBSSN should the US advance.

Delaney Cupdate

The Delaney Cup is my attempt at creating an all-sports championship for the Big Ten. You can find the details here. As Michigan just WON A NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP, they're due some points. A natty is worth 10 points, but I had already awarded them their 5 for making the playoffs so they only get five more. Soon there will be a perma-page for the Delaney Cup in the top navigation bar.

STANDINGS UPDATE:

1. Penn State, 95 pts
2. Wisconsin, 93 pts
3. Michigan, 84 pts
4. MSU, 76 pts
5. Northwestern, 69 pts

The five points didn't do anything in the standings for now. Next update won't happen until after the Indoor Track nationals in early March, followed shortly by the swimming, basketball, and hockey national championships.