Marsden could see her nerves working. "I was a little surprised," he said. "This is a new experience for her, even though she has accomplished so much.

"But if that's her nervous, I think we'll be OK."

Said Postell: "I didn't expect much of it, and I wasn't sure of how college would be. I was pretty shocked."

Postell nearly went to UCLA but had NCAA clearinghouse difficulties as she was home-schooled and wound up making a recruiting visit to Utah on Halloween 2003, so she never saw a meet and the Ute crowd.

Friday's attendance was 10,064, seven more than the highest men's basketball crowd of the season so far.

"It's awesome how the crowd interacts with us," she said.

For Marsden, the meet between college gymnastics two strongest programs, with 15 national titles between them, 10 by Utah, was "exactly what you expected. Both teams had some wonderful, almost flawless, performances and some that were not.

"What I wanted is for them to be comfortable and aggressive and not necessarily try to be perfect" in this season opener, Marsden said.

"It was an almost ideal first meet from a coach's standpoint. We did well enough to win, but things can get better."

Sophomore Rachel Tidd, who missed nationals last spring with mononucleosis, did two events but has back spasms. "I need her back in the other two events. She was almost perfect on the two events she did," Marsden said. She had 9.95s on bars and vault in a meet Marsden had thought about benching her until she made a fuss.

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E-mail: lham@desnews.com