One more weekend in the regular season! Somewhere between one and three meets left before regionals, depending on whether you’re one of the smart teams who scheduled a double this weekend or whether you’re whichever SEC team is about to get really unlucky! I can’t in good conscience write another “this is where the math gets serious” introduction; I’ve done too many of those in a row, but I’m still thinking a lot about all of the math. I’m thinking about the soft and squishy stuff too, though. Who’s better than the numbers? Who’s potentially a bit worse? And who do I just want to run my mouth about for unrelated reasons? Read on and find out.
Question: Who has the worst score left on their NQS?
Late-stage rankings moves are all about upside. For the uninitiated, the distance between the top score on your NQS and the lowest score you can replace this meet divided by five is the maximum by which you can increase your NQS. That means that having a lower score still hanging around on the NQS makes you mobile, and at this point in the season, that can make all the difference.
Michigan State and Georgia, with only about four-tenths between their best and sixth-best scores this season, are both sitting ducks in the rankings; no matter how well…
