BERKELEY - California men's gymnastics will return to action after a two-week break and enter the postseason with the MPSF Championships on Saturday at noon PT in Norman, Oklahoma. The meet will be held at Oklahoma's McCasland Field House; the Golden Bears are currently scheduled to start on pommel horse.
 
Cal found great success in its last trip to Norman, posting the team's first 400-plus team score of the year with a 400.800 as well as modern program top-10s on pommel horse and parallel bars, while senior Noah Sano earned a title on the latter. The Bears will now look to improve both on that performance and on their most recent outing when they scored 404.950 at Stanford to close out the regular season.
 
"Since we are so far into the season, our fitness levels are at a point that they don't need to be largely improved upon, so we have been focused on being more mentally confident, no matter the atmosphere," senior Noah Newfeld said. "We have also been focusing more on smaller details and refinement."
 
The Bears currently have six men ranked on the national top 25 event lists, with Newfeld making appearances on both parallel bars (No. 12) and pommel horse (No. 25). Junior Jasper Smith-Gordon is the highest-ranked Cal gymnast; at No. 6 in the nation on vault and averaging a score of 14.700, he is a College Gymnastics Association (CGA) Regular-Season All-American for the second-consecutive year.
 
Still, the other three teams in the conference have their own star-studded lineups. No. 1 Stanford averages a team score of 415.133 and has the nation's top rings and parallel bars lineups. Seven of its gymnasts earned a total of nine regular-season All-American honors, with juniors Taylor Burkhart (all-around, vault) and Khoi Young (pommel horse, parallel bars) notching two apiece.
 
No. 2 Oklahoma has even more regular-season All-Americans than the Cardinal, collecting 12 honors between eight athletes; junior Emre Dodanli (floor, vault, horizontal bar) leads the pack with three, while redshirt sophomore Fuzzy Benas (all-around, parallel bars) and senior Jack Freeman (floor, horizontal bar) each have two. The Sooners boast the nation's best lineups on floor, pommel horse, vault and horizontal bar.
 
For its part, Air Force fields two regular-Season All-Americans in junior all-arounder Erich Upton and sophomore Patrick Hoopes, the latter being the country's No. 2 man on pommel horse.
 
Cal finished fourth at the 2023 MPSF Championships with a total score of 388.600. This year's squad averages almost nine points higher at 397.317 and has a much deeper lineup, with a program-record three freshmen collecting MPSF weekly honors this year and another two men – senior rings specialist Chris Scales and versatile sophomore Theodor Roald Gadderud – earning additional recognition from the conference.
 
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