Kentucky Earns No. 2 Seed at NCAA Seattle Regional
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SEATTLE, Wash. – For the 13th-consecutive season, No. 12 Kentucky gymnastics is headed to the NCAA Regional. The two-seeded Wildcats will travel to the University of Washington on April 1, 2017 to compete in the Alaska Airlines Arena in Seattle at 7 p.m. ET.
The Wildcats will face No. 1 seed Oklahoma, No. 3 seed Washington, Utah State, Stanford and BYU in the pod.
“We’re looking forward to competing in the Seattle regional against the reigning national champions, Oklahoma, and a very solid Washington program that we faced earlier this season,” head coach Tim Garrison said. “The other teams in the regional have impressive credentials as well. Utah State is highly competitive and Stanford is a perennial power from the PAC-12. Rounding out the regional is a BYU team that has proved to be capable of putting together solid performances.”
Kentucky’s two seed is the highest in program history, earned by the school-record regional qualifying score of 196.845. UK improved that score at the Southeastern Conference Championships last weekend with its best ever championship score of 196.625.
“This will be a very tough regional, but I have every bit of faith in my team and feel that we are ready to compete at the highest level. I like that we will compete in Olympic order, which will allow us to start on vault and finish on floor. We competed in Olympic order at all of our meet and just competed in that order at SEC’s. It’s a strong rotation for us and will give us every opportunity to be successful.”
Kentucky has faced Washington once this year in a quad meet with Illinois and Northern Illinois. UK tied for first in the quad meet with the Fighting Illini, and the Huskies finished in third with a score of 196.450.
The top two teams from the Champaign, Fayetteville and Seattle regionals will compete in one of the semifinals, and the top two teams from the Gainesville, Lincoln and Morgantown regionals will compete in the other semifinal. The top two teams and the top two all-around competitors (who are not on an advancing team) from each regional will receive an automatic berth to the national championships in St. Louis, Missouri, April 14-15.
