On Friday night, the Terrapins gymnastics team (6-5, 2-2 EAGL) would have needed a season-best performance to overcome North Carolina.
Even then, it might not have been enough against a Tar Heels team that exploded for 195.22 points.
Despite scoring a season-high 48.950 on vault, the Terps fell to their conference rival in Chapel Hill, N.C., 195.225-192.700, a week after topping North Carolina (8-1, 2-1) in perhaps their best performance of the year. The team scored 194.475 last week.
For the second week in a row, the Terps set a season-high mark on the vault, scoring 48.900 last week against the Tar Heels and Bowling Green. Nonetheless, coach Brett Nelligan said he wasn’t surprised by his team’s sudden outburst in the event, considering the return of senior leader Kyra Phillips from a strained knee.
“It is so important to have Kyra in the lineup,” Nelligan said. “When you only have two seniors on your entire team, and one is out with an injury, it makes a huge difference.”
All season, the Terps’ strongest event has been the balance beam, with the team averaging 48.360 points per meet coming into Friday. However, Nelligan saw obvious struggles with the beam in their loss to the Tar Heels, where the team posted only 46.92 points.
Even though the Terps have been able to overcome and even utilize their youth throughout their campaign thus far, according to Nelligan, their youth was a weakness on Friday.
“We have a young team,” he said. “We talk about finishing meets in practice, but we had the lead halfway through the meet and we didn’t put it away.”
Next week, the Terps will face another conference rival in West Virginia on Saturday night on their home floor inside Comcast Center. Nelligan has already noticed that his team is fired up for its big meet this weekend.
“West Virginia is a big rival so there is a lot riding on the meet,” he said. “There is a lot of excitement on our team so we’re going to have a great week of practice and we’ll be ready to go come Saturday.”
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