University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Take Second in Tough Competition
1/23/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
The University of Minnesota men's gymnastics team proved its place amongst the best teams in the country in its home opener on Saturday night at the Sports Pavilion.
The No. 7 Gophers finished with a final score of 344.1, handing them second place behind No. 1 Illinois who won the meet with a score of 351.5. No. 11 Nebraska finished in third place with a score of 333.1.
"I was excited about how the guys kept fighting throughout the course of the competition," Minnesota head coach Mike Burns said. "It's still early and we're still rough in some spots but we had some huge highlights."
The Gophers knew heading into the meet that Illinois was going to be a difficult team to take down after seeing them take first place last week at the Windy City Invitational, where they beat the Gophers by 15.0 points.
Yet after falling by only 7.4 points to Illinois on Saturday, the Gophers closed the point gap by 7.6 points in just one week.
Minnesota continued to nearly match the Illini score for score as the night went on.
The meet was so close down the stretch that the Gophers led the meet through four routines with a team score of 233.2, over Illinois' score of 228.9.
Illinois sealed its win with few solid performances down the stretch, but Gophers are still holding their heads high after the meet.
"Illinois is the number one team in the country," Burns said. "They are extremely strong, but we closed the gap against them so I like the fact that we're moving in against them."
The Gophers had several highlight performances as there were 11 personal best scores on the night. Zack Chase had a meet-high score on the vault at 16.4. DJ Repp was right behind him with a score of 16.1 on the vault, a career high. Harris Coleman put on a career best with a score of 14.4 on the horizontal bar.
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