ASU junior Taylor Allex scores 9.700 on the uneven bars, but the Sun Devils lost to Oregon State in a tough defeat at Wells Fargo Arena on Feb. 20, 2015. (Kat Simonovic/The State Press)On Saturday, the ASU gymnastics team will host the No. 10 UCLA Bruins in its final Pac-12 meet before Pac-12 Championships on March 21.
The Gym Devils made a number of tweaks in practice this week to prepare after posting one of their lowest scores of the season in last Friday's loss to No. 12 Oregon State.
"We set goals on every event this week," head coach Rene Lyst said.
Lyst noted that one of the focuses on vault was getting landings perfected and on the bars, the focus was on getting solid handstands together for each performance.
"We didn't do that very well (last week)," Lyst said.
On beam, Lyst said she worked with the team to bring up the "consistency and confidence level" of the team, after two of its six gymnasts fell on the rotation in their last meet.
And on floor, the Gym Devils' focus was on "landings and cleaning them up for stronger finishes."
Lyst understood the difficulty of the team's schedule last week. On Feb. 16, the Gym Devils were in Tucson in the Territorial Cup Series, where they suffered a tough loss to their rival Arizona Gym Cats. There they posted a season-high in overall points and looked to build off their best performance of the season.
Four days later, they were back on the mats in Tempe and lost by nearly three full points to the better-rested Beavers of Oregon State.
To help the Gym Devils recover, Lyst and her staff decided to rest the team.
"We gave the team the whole weekend off last weekend because they were pretty tired," Lyst said. "I think they bounced back energy-wise (this week), so I think we will be a lot stronger on Saturday."
One gymnast who is looking to build off last week's performance is junior Taylor Allex, who had a different perspective of last week's two-meets-in-four-days workload.
"I think it's all mental," Allex said. "We could go a whole week without practice and still go out there and do the same thing we always do with a full week of practice. Gymnastics is such a mental sport that I don't think having less days or more days of practice is going to affect us differently. Obviously practice is nice, and it gives us confidence, but it's more mental than anything."
Allex said she has been working this week to recover from a fall on the balance beam last week, the first time she has fallen on the event this season.
But she remained optimistic and had a positive outlook in practice.
"I've been getting my confidence back, knowing that it happens to everyone," Allex said. "I'm just doing what I'm doing in practice. I'm focusing on the skill that I fell on, but otherwise I'm working hard, staying consistent and working to get better."
Allex has been one of the keys to the Gym Devils' consistency this season and she said the team has been working hard to stay competitive, even though the team has had the injury bug since the start of the year.
"It's been a tough year," Allex said. "We're short (on) girls and a bunch of us have been struggling through injuries but we're doing our best. Hopefully we'll make regionals and then we can do our best there, but I think we're doing as much as we can and it's been difficult with a smaller team this year."
ASU's opponent on Saturday, UCLA, has been having a different season, winners of four straight meets and six of its seven this year.
The Bruins average 196.315 overall points per meet. ASU's season-high is 195.375.
The meet is scheduled to start at 12 p.m. in Tempe and it is the Gym Devils' annual "Pink Meet".
After that, the Gym Devils will play a pair of non-conference opponents (Southern Utah, Air Force) in consecutive weekends before traveling to Utah for the Pac-12 Championships on March 21.
Reach the reporter at mtquesad@asu.edu or follow @mitchTquesada on Twitter.
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