UCLA coach Valorie Kondos Field left the floor in a huff after her team suffered a loss at Utah last year because she felt some of Utah’s fans were rude to her gymnasts.
So what kind of welcome are the third-ranked Utes expecting Sunday when they compete at second-ranked UCLA?
“It will be the roughest crowd we’ve faced,” Utah coach Megan Marsden said.
A rowdy atmosphere just might be what the Utes need at this point in the season. Utah has proven it is comfortable competing in its home arena in front of 15,000-plus fans, but both the Pac-12 Championships (Tucson) and the NCAA Championships (St. Louis) are on the road.
“Our freshmen haven’t really experienced being on someone else’s floor when everybody is rooting against you like that, so it will be good for them,” Marsden said.
UCLA defeated the Utes 197.2-196.975 in a quad meet in Reno earlier this season, so the Utes would like to show they are just as good as the Bruins.
“We will have to be at our best,” Marsden said. “We need to make more stuck vault landings and eliminate some of the other mistakes we have been making.”
The Utes haven’t hit 24 of 24 routines in their last two meets, and correcting those mistakes is their top goal, senior Tiffani Lewis said.
“We have to be very clean,” Lewis said. “We don’t go into a meet thinking we have to beat these guys because that doesn’t determine our placement at regionals or Pac-12s. It’s what we do.”
Luckily for the Utes, the mistakes that have occurred don’t reveal any big issue with one gymnast or event. They’ve been small errors, so the Utes think some minor adjustments should take care of them.
“We know it’s going to be a close meet,” sophomore MyKayla Skinner said. “We can possibly do really well if we are confident and just go out there and enjoy the moment. Hitting 24-for-24 — that’s our goal, and we’ll see where that can take us.”
Still, there is a mental aspect that plays into wins and losses. Going 0-2 against the Bruins wouldn’t help the Utes’ confidence when it comes time for the Pac-12s. But a split would give the Utes a boost.
Still, senior Maddy Stover cautioned the Utes couldn’t put too much stock in one meet.
“It’s going to be good gymnastics, so that is exciting we are going to be tested this weekend,” Stover said. “We’d like to pick up a big road score, but at the same time we can’t focus on one win or loss too much.”
That statement might be true, but the outcome Sunday will go a long way in showing how much work the Utes have left to do.
NO. 3 UTAH AT NO. 2 UCLA <br>When • 6 p.m. MT Sunday <br>Where • Pauley Pavilion <br>TV • Pac-12 Networks <br>Records • Utah 7-1, 4-0; UCLA 9-1, 3-0 <br>Of note • Utah’s MyKayla Skinner and UCLA’s Madison Kocian were members of the 2016 U.S. Olympic team, with Skinner going as an alternate. … Freshman Sydney Soloski, who sat out Utah’s win over ASU with a nose injury, should be back in the floor lineup. … Utah leads the Bruins 11-9 in Los Angeles but has lost the last five in a row. … Kyla Ross is the Bruins’ top all-arounder with a 39.575 average.