Utah Gymnastics Will Face the Fourth Hardest Schedule in 2016

Utah gymnastics will face the fourth hardest schedule in 2016 according to NCAA Gym News. At the end of this article is a graph showing the teams with the toughest schedules from the NCAA Gym News article. According to the article, the rankings were calculated by:

"Looking at the top 20 teams from last season, we took their opponents' rankings from 2015 and added them all together. For an opponent that was competing at home, we deducted two points to account for 'home-mat advantage.'"

Georgia, Arkansas, LSU, Utah, and Alabama round out the top five. Defending National Champion Florida will face the sixth toughest schedule. Utah is the only team from the Pac-12 ranked in the top 10 for hardest schedules. Utah faces a tough Pac-12 slate, with meets against UCLA (on the road), Stanford (on the road), Oregon State, Arizona, California, and Washington. They also have to travel to two tough nonconference opponents: Michigan and Southern Utah and get another tough nonconference opponent at home: Georgia. The Red Rocks will certainly have their work cut out to three-peat as Pac-12 Champions. This will also be the first year for Utah gymnastics without former head coach Greg Marsden, who coached the team for their first forty years and retired as the winningest head coach in NCAA gymnastics history with 1,048 wins. The Red Rocks Preview will occur on Dec. 11 at 7 p.m. MT in the Huntsman Center. The Red Rocks will start their 2016 season on Jan. 8 at 6 p.m. MT against BYU at the Huntsman Center.