No. 2 LSU dethroned No. 1 Oklahoma in a high-stakes victory on Friday, but instead of rising to the top spot, it fell to third in the national rankings.
Why? Because seven weeks into the season, NQS takes effect.
Short for National Qualifying Score, it’s a ranking formula determining which 36 teams will advance to NCAA regionals. Rather than averaging from a team’s collective totals, this system has its own way of calculating overall performance.
First, take the top six scores and make sure at least three were earned away. Next, delete the highest team score and average the remaining five; the final result is a team’s NQS.
This means only five out of the purple and gold’s 11 meets will matter come the postseason. Their NQS currently stands at 197.420 behind No. 2 UCLA with 197.455 and the No. 1 overall Sooners with 197.730.
The Tigers were overtaken when the Bruins’ NQS brought them up three ranks from fifth to second.
LSU head coach Jay Clark spoke on the subject in this week’s press conference.
“This year was pretty seismic,” Clark said. “There were some people that moved pretty significantly in the first week of NQS.”
The Tigers have only competed on the road three times so far, so their season-low score of 196.600 from Arkansas is counted towards their NQS. Their season-high of 198.050 earned against Oklahoma last week is dropped.
“We let one get away from us a few weeks back, and that’s the ripple effect,” Clark said.
Additionally, NQS determines individual and event-specific ranks. As a result, freshman sensation Kailin Chio jumped from No. 22 to No. 9 in the all-around and officially has the No. 1 vault in the nation. She tied Oklahoma’s Faith Torrez with an NQS of 9.930.
Despite dropping in floor and the all-around, LSU remains No. 1 in vault with an NQS of 49.430.
But why does the NCAA use such an archaic system to determine its top teams?
Once, it wasn’t even called NQS, but RQS, Regional Qualifying Score. When the postseason format shifted from Super Six to Four on the Floor in 2021, so did the formula’s name.
NQS is over-complicated to account for rusty early-season performances, higher home scores, and even forfeits, which rarely happen. The thought of a team just missing the postseason cut by having to count a zero has fear-mongered the NCAA to keep the system around for decades.
So, how could we replace it?
“Straight average. Count everything,” Clark said. “I don’t know what sport counts 50% of what they do, but that’s what we end up doing.”
Clark makes a good point; this formula is detrimental to the growth of college gymnastics, and it’s not like a forfeit has happened any time as of late.
“It certainly doesn’t make us more understandable,” Clark said. “I mean, that’s the thing in a sport like ours. The things that I advocate for, the things that I tend to get perturbed about, are things that erode our understandability because as popular, as great as we’re doing here in terms of attendance, nationally, we’re still trying to grow as a sport and increase the awareness.”
A more straight-lined approach could help the younger and more casual fanbase that college gymnastics carries.
By counting straight averages, No. 1 Oklahoma would stay first, followed by the No. 3 Tigers in second, No. 5 Florida in third, No. 2 UCLA in fourth and No. 4 Utah to round out the top-five.
“I want us to be as easily understandable as possible,” Clark said. “That’s ultimately where I go with it.”
But until NQS is made a thing of the past, it’s important to understand how it works and who it will send to this April’s postseason.
