The end seemed inevitable. 

When the University of Oklahoma women’s gymnastics team entered the 2018 NCAA Super Six, they were the odds-on favorite to win their fourth national championship since 2014 and third in a row.

As the final scores of the night started to pop up on the scoreboard in St. Louis, the top-ranked Sooners had already begun to mentally celebrate.

“I think a lot of us thought we had it in the bag,” Oklahoma senior Brenna Dowell said. “Then whenever we looked up at the scoreboard and it was kind of unreal. We just expected to win. It was defiantly disappointing, kind of shocking.”

When it was all said and done, it was UCLA who had the top score of 198.075 to win the 2018 NCAA National Championship. The Sooners were right behind them at 198.0375.

The final margin between becoming a three-time defending champion and three-time runner-up was a mere 0.0375. It’s a number the 2018-19 Sooners seemed to have engrained in their heads as motivation for what they need to accomplish this season.

“I assume its motivation. It’s motivation for me,” Oklahoma coach K.J. Kindler said. “I feel it’s motivation for them. I know that they worked really hard last year, and it just didn't come together for us in those last moments. Where it felt like a championship team, we just didn't come out on top. So, every year that's the goal, we're working toward it right now. I am sure they are motivated by it.”

The Sooners return 11 gymnasts off last year’s runner-up squad. That includes six All-Americans. They all have the memory of falling short to the Bruins on a night they believed they were going to win.

“It is a reminder that no matter how good you think you are, no matter how good the numbers show, there can always be someone who has a better night than you,” OU senior Nicole Lehrmann said. “There's always someone who can get that extra 0.0375.”

While the athletes were caught off guard by the final tally that cost them a title, Kindler was not. The veteran coach had been around long enough to know her Sooners were in a precarious position.

“I never thought we won it but the team definitely felt like the performance was there, I get it,” Kindler said. “But I kind of knew more than they knew. I knew more of the numbers and the math behind it and I knew who was going to bring up the rear at UCLA at the beam and I knew what they're capable of and I was kind of connecting the dots and I think they ... who doesn't want to feel like that, that was theirs. At the end of the day, I didn't feel like the rug was pulled out from under us. I just think we need to earn it a little more.”

What makes losing out on last year’s championship such a hard pill to swallow was everything the Sooners put together in route to the NCAA tournament. Besides rolling through the regular season without a loss, Oklahoma was ranked No. 1 for all but one week.

Because they were also the two-time defending champions at the time, in the back of their minds, the Sooners may have just expected that the title was meant to be there’s again.

In other words, they were comfortable, which is a position Kindler does not want her team to be in.

“After championship years I think it's tougher to get motivated for everyone in the room, including the coaching staff and the athletes because you are very satisfied with yourself, as you should be. And that little extra fire may not be there,” Kindler said. “It's lit, but it's not like raging. Right now you should be under a raging fire and it should be pushing you. I think preparing after a second place finish is definitely a little more rewarding and a little more motivating and inspirational.”

When teams have that type of success, it can be easy to overlook slight flaws during the season that can come back to bite them later. Lehrmann said the team is trying to ensure those things do not happen again.

“I think we're all able to be really open with one another and kind of call each other out and hold everyone accountable, which is like you need that even for yourself,” Lehrmann said. “No one's perfect, we're all just walking out even as seniors. We're not just doing everything perfectly, sometimes you need to be called out like hey, get back to it. And so I think we're all comfortable enough to do that and I think that that's a good thing to not get offended when someone does that but just take it as a little self-check.”

As Oklahoma prepares for the upcoming season, everything that happened in the final night of the 2017-18 season is going to be used kindling to stoke the fires of an OU squad looking to reclaim their spot at the top of the NCAA gymnastics mountain.

“We defiantly want to bring it back. It puts a little extra pep in our step, a little more motivation just so we can make it not as close,” Dowell said. “Because we know all of the other teams are working really hard. UCLA, Florida, all the teams that can come up. And we want to make sure we’re able to distance ourselves and that starts in preseason right now.”

Both Dowell and Lehrmann were part of the back to back title-winning squads as freshman and sophomores. Now that they are seniors and have endured their first year of not being champions, the drive to bring the hardware back to Oklahoma is intense.

“It would mean the world,” Lehrmann said. “It’s meant the world that I am even part of two championship seasons, even part of one. That means the world to me and to do it again would be absolutely incredible.”

Michael Kinney is a freelance content provider who handles sports, news, entertainment, culture, and lifestyles. You can find him on Twitter, Instagram, and on his blog.