Oklahoma, Penn State and Michigan Advance to NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships Finals Friday Night
STANFORD, Calif. -- Oklahoma, Penn State and Michigan earned spots in tomorrow night's NCAA Men's Gymnastics Championships team finals where they will join three teams from tonight's evening qualifier at Stanford's Maples Pavilion.
Tonight's evening qualifier which begins tonight at 7:00 pm features top-ranked Stanford, fourth-ranked California, Temple, Iowa, Minnesota and Illinois.
Oklahoma (357.5) narrowly edged defending national champion Penn State (357.3) while Michigan also earned a spot in tomorrow night's team finals with a score of 354.3. Ohio State missed out in the team finals, finishing fourth behind Michigan with a team score of 351.8.
Oklahoma earned scores of 61.50 on the floor exercise, 55.60 on the pommel horse, 61.15 on the rings, 63.55 on the vault, 58.90 on the p-bars and 56.75 on the high bar to capture top team honors in the first session.
Oklahoma and Penn State have combined the last six and seven of the last 10 NCAA Championships.
Earning spots in Friday night's all-around finals were Eddie Hay (Ohio State), Jimmy Wickham (Ohio State) and David Locke (William & Mary) in the floor exercise; TJ Schmidt (Nebraska), Andy Saurber (Ohio State) and Stephen Tetrault (Nebraska) on the pommel horse; James Primm (William & Mary), Shachar Tai (Ohio State) and Anthony Ingrelli (Nebraska) on the rings; Wickham (Ohio State), Anthony Mars (Nebraska) and Brandon Wynn (Ohio State) on vault; DJ Bucher (Ohio State), Webb (Ohio State), Schmidt (Nebraska); David Ortiz (Ohio State), Wynn (Ohio State) and Justin Myers (Ohio State) on the high bar.
Ohio State's Jake Bateman, Tai Lee and Andrew Stover of Illinois-Chicago earned spots in Saturday night's all-around finals.
Post Session Quotes
PENN STATE
"Mediocre," responded Penn State head coach Randy Jepson when asked to assess his team’s performance today. "We had a sloppy start and kind of hung on for a little while and then we got things going. We can certainly be better tomorrow, as can everyone in the field. It’s going to take that kind of effort. It’s nice to know we qualified and didn’t hit out of our minds, but you want to ready on the last day; that’s when it counts."
"They were very clean," said Coach Jepson of his rings performers. "We point to be strongest at this meet and that seem to show today. But today doesn’t count. It got us in but you really want to be at your strongest tomorrow. It takes a little endurance and we were able to do that last year, but it’s a different team and a different year."
OKLAHOMA
Oklahoma Senior Taqiy Abdullah-Simmons
"We had our bright spots and our low spots, but we did what we needed to do which was qualify for the next day. That was our main focus. Now we just have to make sure our heads are in the game the entire day tomorrow."
Oklahoma Head Coach Mark Williams
"The emotional level tomorrow night will be significantly higher. It’s not about not making mistakes, but about having your best performance and there’s a big difference in the approach. I think we were a little too careful on some things today and tomorrow we’re just going to let it all out."
MICHIGAN
Head Coach Kurt Golder
On the meet... "We had a fair amount of adversity. I was really proud of how the guys didn’t let it bother them. The adversity ranged from a couple of missed routines all the way to a meet-ending injury for Ben Baldus-Strauss on vault. We had to change our lineup and some guys had to compete that hadn’t even warmed up because we had to stay with 12 guys. The guys kept it together and qualified."
On Mel Santander’s vault performance... "It’s the first time he has competed in vault this year. He did a great job. That’s part of the adversity I am talking about it. He really had to step up. It was a complicated vault. That’s the performance of the day for us."
On tomorrow’s competition... "We’re looking to do a little bit better than we did today and a lot better on vault. Vault is an area where everyone can get a big team score and we were probably the only team that didn’t. With Ben’s injury and some other problems, our vault scored like all our other events and it should be a couple points higher. If we get resolved, maybe we can compete with the big boys."
Freshman Ben Baldus-Strauss
On his injury... "I just popped out my ankle when I landed on vault. I landed on my toes."
On how he feels... "I’m pretty good. I’m really happy to see the team advance. I really wanted to help out my team tomorrow but I’m happy we were able to pull it together. We handled the adversity well. It was the most fun meet of the season prior to my injury."
