Tide gymnasts post season-best score to whip Penn State

TUSCALOOSA | After counting three falls and losing two meets on last week’s road trip to California, the important thing for the No. 6 University of Alabama gymnastics team Friday was to win and do it without any major gaffes.

The sixth-ranked Crimson Tide did that and more in posting a season-best score of 197.3 to beat No. 20 Penn State’s 194.675 at Coleman Coliseum, posting seven scores of 9.9 or better and topping the 49-point mark on all four events for the first time this season in front of a crowd of 9,503.

The defeats on the West Coast — to Stanford and Nebraska in one meet and to Arkansas in the other — presented a challenge for the UA athletes.

“I really think after our performance out in California we really stepped up in the gym,” said sophomore Kassi Price, who won the all-around with a score of 39.45. “We really wanted to prove ourselves as a team.”

Alabama went 49.4 on vault to start out the meet, with Morgan Dennis and Kayla Hoffman scoring 9.925, then put up a 49.25 on uneven parallel bars behind twin 9.9s from Hoffman and Price.

The meet’s only glitch for Alabama was a fall on bars by Cassie Martin. Sophomore Ricki Lebegern got the Tide back on track with a 9.825 and Alabama never faltered again.

“It was a whole lot better than this past weekend,” Alabama coach Sarah Patterson said. “I think the ladies did exceptionally well.

“I think probably the most important routine of the night was Ricki Lebegern coming up after Cassie Martin. Cassie missed her routine and Ricki had trouble coming up after somebody who had missed at UCLA [last weekend].”

Alabama didn’t get any 9.9s on the beam, but was solid from start to finish with Casey Overton going 9.875 in the leadoff position and Dennis matching that score in the anchor for a 49.25 rotation.

The Tide closed out the meet with some punch on floor exercise. Kaitlin White scored a career-best 9.9 to touch of a trio of high scores, with Hoffman going 9.925 and Price adding a 9.9.

“We just build off each other,” Price said. “Every step we hear the crowd, we hear the cheers.”

Dennis was deducted a tenth for going out of bounds on her final tumbling pass in the last floor routine of the night, costing UA a string of four straight scores of 9.9 or better to close out the meet.

“We had a great meet going on the first three events,” White said. “We wanted to keep it going on and finish strong.”

Alabama will host Auburn next Friday at 7:30 p.m. to close out the regular season.

Reach Tommy Deas at tommy.deas@tuscaloosanews.com or at 205-722-0224.