Utah Utes gymnastics: Utes win, but it's far from perfect

MINNEAPOLIS — The most difficult day of the season is over for the Utah gymnastics team, and its record for qualifying for the national gymnastics championships remains a perfect 33-for-33, even if the Utes were hardly perfect in easily winning Saturday's NCAA North Central Regional at the University of Minnesota.

"I know we weren't spectacular in some places," said Ute coach Greg Marsden, whose club advanced by scoring 196.95 to second-place Arkansas's 196.125, "but I like this team because they battle.

"We easily could have had two or three falls on bars (Utah's first event Saturday), and they just covered and went on and made up new things and continued on. As a coach, you've got to like that.

"No, you don't like to start a meet like that, but for the most part we got better as the meet went on and vault was fantastic," Marsden said of the Utes' final event, on which they scored 49.40. Marsden said he didn't think the vault team could have done any better.

"Hopefully we'll peak at the right time," said Marsden, with an eye on April 24-26 and the 2008 NCAA Championships at Georgia.

Georgia was the highest-scoring team in the six regional meets around the country.

The top two teams from each regional advance to nationals in a little less than two weeks.

Other scores in Saturday's North Central Regional were Minnesota 195.275, Arizona 194.27, Southern Utah 194.050 and Iowa 193.875.

Georgia and Utah were ranked Nos. 1 and 2 most of the season. Utah defeated Georgia in the season-opener.

Utah's Ashley Postell picked up four individual victories Saturday, winning the all-around at 39.60 to teammate Kristina Baskett's 39.40, even though both of them watered down in some events and neither had the meet of her life, just like their team. Daria Bijak finished fourth in the all-around at 39.35.

"I think we started out a little shaky on bars, but we gained momentum the rest of the meet," said Baskett, the 2006 NCAA bars champion who scored 9.825 to be one of six to tie for second behind Postell. Baskett noted the Utes started the meet with the bye before bars, meaning they sat out after warming up. She wasn't sure if that had anything to do with herself and several teammates having to ad lib their bar routines. Jamie Deetscreek, Bijak and Postell all had some bars problems, Postell hitting her heel on the low bar but covering.

On other events, it was planned to downgrade a bit for some people. "We don't want to beat up anybody's body" at this point with only nationals to go, said Baskett.