Oklahoma's bid for an all-time best 13th national championship in men's gymnastics wasn't to be as the Sooners finished third in the 2025 NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships on Saturday.
Two-seed Michigan thrilled the home crowd at Crisler Arena in Ann Arbor, Michigan, finishing first in the six-team championship finals to capture the Wolverines' seventh national title in the sport. Michigan posted a top score of 332.224 to beat out second-place Stanford (332.061) and Oklahoma (327.891) for the top prize this season in men's gymnastics.
Sooners finish third at NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships
OU senior All-American Emre Dodanli was the national champion on the high bar with a top score of 13.833. Dodanli became Oklahoma's first individual national champion since Gage Dyer captured the floor exercise and vault national titles in 2021. He also is the first Sooner to win a national championship on the high bar since Olympian Jonathan Horton in 2007.
Redshirt junior Fuzzy Benas scored 81.364 in the national all-around competition to place third for the second consecutive year. It was his first all-around competition of the season.
The Sooners started out the finals on pommel horse, which was the apparatus head coach Mark Williams said OU had to do better on than in the qualifying session a day earlier. The Sooners improved on their qualifying session score, but were in fifth place after the first two rotations on Saturday.
A huge team score on vault (56.532), however, led by Benas' 14.333, moved Oklahoma into second place at the midway point after three rotations. The Sooners remained in the No. 2 spot after posting their second-highest score of the season on parallel bars (54.732). They dropped a spot, to third, after the high-bar event, and secured a third-place finish with a 54.531 score in floor exercise in their final rotation.
"Overall, we had a much better meet than we had (Friday)," Williams said. "All the way around, we had tremendous fight. We probably could've gotten a little closer, but boy, that was Michigan's night to win a national championship. ...
Oklahoma was competing in its 25th consecutive national finals and has finished in the top three in 23 of the last 24 NCAA Championships.