A look at the top D-scores for the senior women on every event…

A lot of questions were answered last night regarding the U.S. women’s team…the big one of course being whether Alicia Sacramone’s comeback is legit, and the answer to that was an astounding “yes!”  Other questions were answered as well, such as how good Mattie Larson and Samantha Shapiro look (pretty awesome), who some of our potentially best bar workers are (Caquatto and Whitcomb), whether Kytra Hunter is healthy (YES!), and whether Bridget Sloan is in top form (pretty much).  The fact that Sacramone looked so good on BOTH vault and beam certainly shakes things up with regards to the world championship team quite a bit.  Kayla Williams being out at this meet, combined with Sacramone’s huge vault, puts Williams in serious question as well.  And with Kytra Hunter outperforming Aly Raisman on both floor and vault, combined with Raisman looking a bit lost in her twisting, and the fact that Raisman’s beam didn’t score too high puts her world team chances in serious jeopardy as well.

I decided to put together a ranking of the top D-scores on all four events to see who are top three are on each event if we consider difficulty alone.  Obviously there is much more to consider than just difficulty (like execution and competitive ability), but it certainly does tell us a lot.  These numbers are only based on yesterday’s competition, although I did add in some obvious D-scores that would make an impact, such as Williams on vault and Bross and Sloan on both floor and vault.  For Bross and Sloan, I used the floor D-scores they have shown in their other most recent competitions.  I didn’t give anyone an Amanar on vault because I haven’t seen any of the seniors successfully complete it, and I didn’t give Van Zam her “Cheng” because I haven’t seen it in competition (otherwise she would be at the top of vault with a 6.5).  I also didn’t rank Shapiro on bars because of her injury last night and also because I wasn’t sure what routine she was going to do…she could definitely be up there though.  I ranked the top 7 on each event, although vault has more because of ties.  Here’s what I came up with:

Vault

1.  Alicia Sacramone                   6.3

2.  Kayla Williams                        6.3

3.  Kytra Hunter                            5.8

4.  Aly Raisman                                  5.8

5.  Bridget Sloan                                 5.8

6.  Rebecca Bross                               5.8

7.  Mackenzie Caquatto                   5.8

8.  Amanda Jetter                             5.8

9.  Morgan Smith                             5.8

Bars

1.  Rebecca Bross                         6.2

2.  Mackenzie Caquatto            6.2

3.  Bridget Sloan                           6.1

4.  Cassie Whitcomb                        5.9

5.  Mattie Larson                              5.8

6.  Amanda Jetter                             5.7

7.  Chelsea Davis                              5.6

Beam

1.  Rebecca Bross                        6.4

2.  Kytra Hunter                         6.1

3.  Alicia Sacramone                6.0

4.  Aly Raisman                               5.9

5.  Mattie Larson                             5.7

6.  Sophia Lee                                    5.7

7.  Rhegan Courville                        5.6

Floor

1.  Rebecca Bross                        6.2

2.  Raisman                                    5.9

3.  Kytra Hunter                          5.8

4.  Mattie Larson                        5.8

5.  Bridget Sloan                              5.7

6.  Cassie Whitcomb                       5.6

7.  Morgan Smith                            5.5

This is ASSUMING that Kayla Williams can still do her front handspring rudi on vault, and that’s a big question mark, especially considering she is currently injured.  Vault is a little different in terms of D-score because several gymnasts have a 5.8, so it will come down to who has the best Yurchenko double fulls to fill one or two of our vault spots.  If we consider ONLY bars, beam, and floor, we see that SEVEN GYMNASTS are in the top three on any of these events, and they are:

1.  Rebecca Bross            (UB, BB, FX)

2.  Kytra Hunter              (BB, FX)

3.  Bridget Sloan             (UB)

4.  Alicia Sacramone     (BB)

5.  Mac. Caquatto           (UB)

6.  Aly Raisman              (FX)

7.  Mattie Larson            (FX)   (alternate??)

Could this be our world team, with one of them being the alternate  I definitely think so.  In fact, if I had to pick it after last night’s meet, these seven make the most sense.  Technically I’d have to say that Larson would be the alternate, because she only made the top three on one event (3rd on floor), and Raisman’s floor D-score is a tenth higher.

Of course, we have to make sure vault would be okay, and it certainly would be.  We could use Sacramone plus really ANY of the other two gymnasts.  I’d probably pick Hunter and Raisman, or Sloan if Raisman is having any trouble.

Keep in mind if Zamarripa throws a Cheng at nationals (she totally could have…that thing was ENORMOUS!), and if Shapiro is healthy and does well on bars, that could change things dramatically.

Any thoughts??