K.J. Kindler Expecting Oklahoma to Rebound on the Vault Heading Into Regionals

NORMAN — There was no hesitation for Oklahoma coach K.J. Kindler picking out the Sooners’ rotation for this weekend’s NCAA Regional in Lexington, Ky.

Despite a less-than-stellar performance on the event at the SEC Championships on March 21, Kindler opted to begin her team on the vault.

“We feel like we can start out hot there and kind of sail from that point forward,” Kindler said. “Momentum is going to be very important in this meet and we feel like we can gain some momentum on that.”

This is the first time the top seed at each regional can pick its rotation and the Sooners will go in Olympic order — vault, bars, beam, floor.

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Despite finishing second in the SEC Championships, the Sooners are the top overall seed in the postseason.

Oklahoma opens their regional against No. 16 Kentucky, Ohio State and either Central Michigan or Rutgers at 6 p.m. Friday.

The top two teams from that group will advance to Sunday’s regional final, where they’ll take on the top two teams of the first session of the regional featuring No. 8 Missouri, No. 9 Arkansas, North Carolina State and Maryland.

The regional will be streamed on ESPN+.

The Sooners have won 15 consecutive regional titles and have advanced to the NCAA championships 21 consecutive times.

Even though it would be a stunning upset if Oklahoma didn’t advance, Kindler isn’t taking anything for granted.

“It’s a make-or-break situation,” Kindler said. “You come with it or you don’t qualify. … So the pressure has changed and it’s definitely more intense.”

Oklahoma’s 49.325 on vault in the SEC meet was its lowest in the event all season. The scores weren’t bad — no one scored below a 9.8, but none scored above a 9.9 either.

But Kindler is banking on a return to form for the Sooners in the NCAA postseason.

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Oklahoma is ranked No. 1 in the event with a 49.543 national qualifying score, and three Sooners — Addison Fatta, Mackenzie Estep and Keira Wells are ranked in the top five individually.

“We caught zero landings,” Kindler said of the SEC vault troubles. “The vaults were good. The challenge with starting on vault is the adrenaline especially in a meet of that caliber. So you do have to control yourself a little bit and it’s very difficult because vault is a full-throttle event. You’re going as hard as you can to do the best-executed vault that you can. I thought our steps were controlled. I don’t know that we were rewarded in the same way throughout the meet. I thought that that event escalated in score pretty dramatically. But we need to catch a couple landings. That’s really what it comes down to.”

The Sooners have had recent success coming up short in the conference meet and then rebounding.

Last season, Oklahoma finished behind LSU and then went on to win the national championship.

“This is a very different team,” Kindler said. “And I will also say this was a very different SEC performance. Last year we were poor. We executed poorly in the SEC. We weren’t even close at the end. We kind of faltered in that last event. This year I felt like the team fought all the way through coming from fourth on that first event (vault) all the way to contending to win that meet. So I think this team showed a lot of guts in that moment. Number one, they learned how close it can be and that every little tenth and every little thing is going to matter.”

Oklahoma comes into the postseason ranked second on the balance beam and fourth in both bars and floor.

None of the other teams in the Sooners’ regional are ranked ahead of Oklahoma in any event.

The Sooners battled some health issues late in the season but Kindler said the last two weeks have allowed the team to get “much healthier.”