Matter on Mizzou: Gymnasts tumble into elite company – St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Missouri gymnastics coach Shannon Welker, left, talks to his team alongside freshman Jocelyn Moore during a recent meet at Hearnes Center in Columbia, Mo.
COLUMBIA, Mo. — Mover over Mizzou wrestling. Step aside Mizzou softball. There’s another team in black and gold that can claim it’s now the best on campus.
By the slimmest of margins on the final routine of the weekend, the Missouri gymnastics team put itself in position to compete for a national championship on Saturday. Shannon Welker’s Tigers, flirting with the top 10 all season, clinched one of eight spots in the NCAA Championships over the weekend, edging UCLA at Saturday’s NCAA regional final in Raleigh, North Carolina.
Mizzou officially punched its ticket to the NCAA Championship semifinals on the day’s last routine — by a toe. On her opening tumbling pass on the floor exercise, Amari Celestine’s right toe nudged the out of bounds line, but the judges didn’t deduct from her score. Her 9.925 was enough to put the Tigers in front of UCLA, 197.425 to 197.400.
“I envisioned that moment for a long time for this team … and it actually happened last night,” Welker told fans who greeted the team outside its facility Sunday when they returned from North Carolina. “It was so surreal, but I was so excited for these young ladies. It was awesome.”
This marks the first time MU has advanced to the NCAA Championships since 2010 — Welker took over the program in 2014 — and just the second time in program history. Mizzou will compete in the national semifinals in Fort Worth, Texas, starting April 14. Missouri will compete in the second of two semifinal rounds, along with Florida, Auburn and Michigan. In the first semifinal, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Utah and Alabama will compete for a spot in the finals on April 16.
The Tigers had been trending toward this kind of breakthrough for more than a year, finishing each of the last two seasons ranked No. 14 nationally. This season, though, with a roster of mostly freshmen and sophomores, Mizzou dazzled on the mats like never before, twice setting team records for the highest single-meet scores in Mizzou history while outscoring three SEC foes in Arkansas, LSU and Georgia. Mizzou’s fourth-place finish at the SEC Championships was its best ever at the conference meet. Welker was named SEC coach of the year for his team’s breakthrough season.
Junior beam specialist Sienna Schrieber, the SEC specialist of the year, has anchored the rotations all season, while freshmen Celestine and Jocelyn Moore, a first-team All-American on the vault, have revitalized Welker’s lineup. Moore tied for first place on the floor in the NCAA regionals (9.95), while Schreiber finished second on the beam (9.95.)
Mizzou needed a successful weekend on the home diamonds to keep their seasons from spiraling. Done and done. The No. 24 MU softball team swept South Carolina in three games at Mizzou Stadium, while the Tigers baseball team took two of three from the Gamecocks, winning Saturday and Sunday at Taylor Stadium.
On the baseball diamond, Vanderbilt smoked the Tigers in a three-game sweep to open SEC play, but over the last two weekends, Mizzou went 3-3 against Arkansas and South Carolina and finished with a plus-3 run differential over the two series, thanks to Saturday’s 10-3 blowout, sparked by two Luke Mann home runs. The star of the day was starter Austin Marozas, a transfer from Charlotte who struck out 10 in a career-best 6 2/3 innings
“The sinker ball guys,” Tigers coach Steve Bieser said, “sometimes they have a little issue settling in early because they’ve got good velo, but man, once he started kind of wearing down a little bit and really getting that ball to the bottom of the zone and using his three-pitch mix, that was pretty special.”
Through three SEC series, Mizzou (17-8, 3-6) is the most improved offensive team in the league with a team slash line of .292/.396/.436 plus 40 steals, third-most in the SEC. Opponents are hitting just .234 against MU pitching, fifth-best among SEC staffs.
Now comes the season’s biggest challenge: a three-game series at No. 1 Tennessee (27-1, 9-0). Former Tigers player and assistant coach Tony Vitello has built a powerhouse in Knoxville as the Vols lead the SEC in nearly every major statistical category. How dominant are the Vols? They just swept Vandy by a collective score of 16-4 and now lead the nation in both batting average (.338) and ERA (1.86).
As for the softball team, those World Series plans had been put on hold during a midseason slump that saw the Tigers lose seven of eight games, including all five of their first SEC contests. The weekend sweep of South Carolina was more of a relief. On Sunday, Kim Wert continued her productive weekend doubling home the game’s first run, followed by Kendyll Bailey’s game-winning homer in the third. Laurin Krings scattered six hits in six innings for the win. On Friday, Wert launched her 48th career home run, breaking Jen Bruck’s team record set in 2008.
Wert’s 48 homers have essentially come over three seasons. The Hofstra transfer arrived three years ago, played the entire seasons in 2019 and 2021 seasons but had the 2020 season cut short. She still has another 17 regular-season games plus the postseason to add to her total.
The Tigers (22-13, 3-5) enter their weekend series at Mississippi State in 10th place in the SEC but just 2 ½ games out of first place in the logjam conference standings.
New men’s basketball coach Dennis Gates has been in New Orleans for the Final Four and with the NCAA dead period coming to an end this week, the Tigers could have some assistant coaches officially on staff once the recruiting period begins Thursday. A few names have surfaced as potential candidates, per sources: St. John’s associate head coach T.J. Cleveland and John A. Logan College head coach Kyle Smithpeters. Cleveland is the nephew of St. John’s coach Mike Anderson and has worked for his uncle at every coaching stop, including their five-year stay at Mizzou. Smithpeters is from the Mid-Missouri area, playing at Harrisburg High. He’s produced 40 Division I players at John A. Logan College, annually one of the nation’s top junior college programs, and over the last three years has produced more NBA draft picks than Mizzou: guard Jay Scrubb was s second-round pick by the Nets in 2020 and later traded to the Clippers.
On the transfer front, a few notable targets included Missouri in their recent cut-down lists:
• Bradley point guard Terry Roberts has MU in his top 10, along with SEC schools Florida, Georgia and Mississippi State. He was a first-team Missouri Valley Conference player this year, averaging 14.5 points and 4.1 assists.
• Northern Iowa forward Noah Carter is down to Arkansas, Florida, Marquette, Missouri and Virginia Tech and plans to visit Mizzou this weekend, 247Sports reported. At 6-6, he’s got the size of a wing but played inside for NIU, averaging 15.1 points per game.
• Sean East, point guard from the aforementioned John A. Logan College, recently named the national junior college player of the year, has the Tigers in his top six, along with BYU, Clemson, Kentucky, Oregon and South Florida. He averaged 20.9 points, 5.7 assists and shot 41% from 3-point range. East’s next school will be his fourth after beginning his college career at UMass then Bradley.
It was a forgettable finish for the Mizzou women’s basketball team, but the Tigers can now say they were one of just two teams to beat national champion South Carolina. How exactly did the Tigers pull that off back on Dec. 30? … First-year athletics director Desiree Reed-Francois was on hand for Thursday’s gymnastics regional at N.C. State, which Welker later noted was the first time his AD attended a postseason NCAA event. “I thought that was a real cool thing,” he said when the team returned to Columbia. … Message for Mizzou Twitter: Yes, we’re well aware that Monday’s Kansas-North Carolina championship game features several starters from the state of Missouri. But just in case we didn’t see that the first 7,000 tweets, feel free to remind the world a few more times. … The Athletic rates former Mizzou standout Aijha Blackwell as the No. 1 women’s basketball player available in the NCAA transfer portal. … Former Mizzou men’s hoops assistant coach Cornell Mann landed his first head-coaching job, taking over at Division II Grand Valley State in his home state of Michigan. Mann was on Cuonzo Martin’s MU staff each of the last five years.
Dave Matter brings you the latest updates from the Mizzou sports scene.
Dave Matter is the Mizzou beat writer for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
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Missouri gymnastics coach Shannon Welker, left, talks to his team alongside freshman Jocelyn Moore during a recent meet at Hearnes Center in Columbia, Mo.
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