University of Minnesota Athletics
Gophers Take Down Air Force
2/19/2011 12:00:00 AM | Men's Gymnastics
The University of Minnesota men's gymnastics team took care of business on Friday night as it took down Air Force 345.6-331.3 at the Sports Pavilion.
The Gophers walk away from the meet with several reasons to feel proud of the win. Their 345.6 score is the highest achieved so far this season, and the 14-point win is biggest point differential Minnesota has enjoyed this year.
"Overall I was pretty pleased with the effort tonight," Minnesota head coach Mike Burns said. "Our hit percentage was greatly improved and that's something that we've really been working on. We still had a couple mishaps, but that comes with the precision involved with the sport...but these guys still come out of this meet feeling pretty good."
The Gophers controlled the meet from the start, jumping out to an early lead with a score of 58.7 on the floor exercise.
However, the Falcons remained competitive and eventually closed the gap to 170.6-169.8 mid-way through the meet.
Minnesota still never wavered down the stretch and went on to pull away by continuing its trend of being very solid on the vault, this time scoring a 62.8 on the event.
The Gophers had several solid individual performances on the night. Freshman Zack Chase put up the highest score of the evening with a 16.1 on the vault. Junior Adam LaFleur scored a 15.7 on the vault as well as an event-high score of 15.0 on the floor exercise.
"Zack Chase did a great job," Burns said. Adam LaFleur won the Cooke award tonight and did an awesome job on the floor and vault. I thought the rings team did a really job tonight with four out of six stuck dismounts, and that's what we need to do on that event."
The Gophers return to the road next weekend as they travel to UIC on Sunday at 1 p.m.
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