The third time wasn’t charm for the men’s Oklahoma gymnastics team, as the Sooners finished second to Stanford for the third consecutive year in the 2022 NCAA Championship.
The Sooners posted their second highest score of the season (414.555), but that was still more than nine points shy of the two-time defending Stanford Cardinal. It was Stanford’s eighth national title in men’s gymnastics, and the Cardinal became the sixth program to win back-to-back-to-back NCAA championships.
The defending champions took the overall lead in the first rotation at the Lloyd Noble Center in Norman, host site for this year’s NCAA Championship finals, starting out on vault. The Cardinal posted the highest score in the opening event and never relinquished the top spot the rest of the way in a dominate overall performance. The Sooners started out on the pommel horse and posted the fifth best score after the first rotation.
As the evening progressed, it became readily apparent that the real battle was for second place between Oklahoma and Michigan.
The Sooners remained in fifth place after two rotations but jumped up into third place at the halfway point in the championship. Oklahoma moved ahead of Michigan into second place after the five rotations, posting their highest score of the year on high bar. The Sooners 69.865 high-bar score was the highest of the six competing teams and the only event not won by Stanford.
Oklahoma began the final rotation ahead of the Wolverines by a narrow 1.133 points. The Sooner squad maintained the momentum of its high-bar performance into the sixth and final event, recording its second-best floor performance of the season, which was enough to hold off Michigan for second place in the final standings.
Head coach Mark Williams, who has been at the helm of the OU men’s gymnastics program for 23 seasons and has won nine national titles with the Sooners, had this to say about the Oklahoma performance in his post-event press conference:
"“That’s as good as we could do,” Williams said. “At the beginning of the season, we knew Stanford would be great. We knew it would be a difficult task.“We gave it a run, and then to beat the rest of the field, I am super thrilled about finishing second.”"
The Sooners have finished in the top two of 19 of the past 21 NCAA Men’s Championships.