Happy meet day, everyone! Today I’m in the Crisler Center covering the first of four meets in the Ann Arbor regional. The action in Ann Arbor all starts today with Illinois and Ball State, and the winner will compete in the second semifinal on Thursday night.
Illinois is technically the favorite in this meet with the higher NQS and average. The Illini are coming off a sixth-place finish at the Big Ten championship with a 196.700. The week before that, Illinois scored its season-high 197.275. The only problem Illinois may face is with its inconsistency. Now when I say inconsistency, I don’t mean that the Illini are putting up “bad” scores. I mean that they aren’t consistently able to score above the mid-196 range, which may be what it takes to best Ball State, a team that’s scored above 197 multiple times this year. Big scores from stars like Mia Townes and Arielle Ward will be the key to getting the overall score up to where it needs to be to advance to the second round in Ann Arbor.
Ball State has proven that it can put up big scores this year, but like Illinois, the consistency has been tough. The Cardinals put up a program-high 198.025 at the beginning of the year, but they’ve understandably struggled to get back up to that historic number. A…
