Utah Utes gymnastics: Utes claim a win

SALT LAKE CITY — Iowa State's 21st-ranked gymnastics team came into the Huntsman Center on Friday night and impressed Utah coach Greg Marsden.

He told Cyclones coach Jay Ronayne as much following Utah's 196.30-195.35 victory in its home-opener to leave the Utes 1-1 for the season.

The score was 2 points better than the Cyclones had hit in their season-opener at home last week, 193.30. But what Marsden was really thinking, at least halfway through the meet, he said, was that maybe he was going to be too impressed with the Cyclones.

They were just .175 point behind the 11th-ranked Utes despite a career-high 9.925 vault from junior Kyndal Robarts and a strong 9.875 bars from senior Jamie Deetscreek after two events. In fact, with just three performers left in the meet, the Utes actually were trailing ISU.

And that was after the final three people in the Ute beam lineup — Annie DiLuzio with 9.85 to tie her career high, Deetscreek with 9.90 and Daria Bijak with 9.85 — pulled the club back into a 49.00 team score on that event.

On floor, those three plus Robarts all had 9.825 or better, on up to DiLuzio's 9.95, while ISU suffered a fall on beam for the Utes to not only pull out a victory but finish with a total that was really quite respectable.

"It helped everybody's mood when the people at the end hit," said Deetscreek.

"I'm proud that they responded the way they did," Marsden said after a week of hard training that followed that 196.60-195.125 loss at UCLA last Saturday. "Overtrained," he said, in hindsight.

He told them going into this meet that they could use that excuse of training too hard, and he'd take the blame if they lost.

"You've got a freebie," he said.

Or he told them they could be aggressive and compete through all the sore muscles, and that's what they eventually did.

They also didn't fold when the first few people in the last two events had falls or low scores.

In fact, a number of the Utes worked their "routines looking like they were in control," Marsden said, adding that he was "encouraged" about Friday's showing.

With arch-rival Georgia coming to the Huntsman Center next Friday — even though it lost Friday at Alabama, 196.275-195.50 — the Utes figure they'll have to improve by leaps for the second week in a row.