April 19, 2013
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The Penn State men's gymnastics competed in the qualifying round of the NCAA Championships on Friday night inside Rec Hall. The top-ranked Nittany Lions came in first in the second session of qualifiers with a total team score of 436.900. The top spot secures a spot in the team/all-around finals that will the contested tomorrow evening on the University Park campus, starting at 7 p.m.
The Nittany Lions score of 436.900 was just short of Michigan, who came in on top of the afternoon session with 443.850. Following Penn State by just over one point was Stanford (435.850) and coming in third in the evening session was Iowa (426.550) beating Cal by a tenth of a point (436.450). In fifth place was Ohio State with 421.950 and Temple finished with a total of 407.800.
Along with Michigan from the afternoon session, Oklahoma tallied a score of 433.850 to finish second and defending champion Illinois edged Minnesota for the final qualifying position, 426.900-424.700.
The Nittany Lions topped the team scores on the pommel horse, still rings and high bar, while placing second on parallel bars. Their high bar score of 72.800 was over two points higher than the nearest competitor. Penn State also posted a still rings score of 75.200 topping their nearest competitor by over a point and their pommel horse score was a 72.300 topping second place Stanford's score by one point. On parallel bars, the Nittany Lions had the two highest scores and with a team score of 72.450, the blue and white trailed close to Stanford's 72.800.
Penn State gymnasts occupied the top three scores for the high bar event, with Wasef Burbar (Arlington Heights, Ill.) topping the charts with a score of 15.200. Senior Mackenzie Dow (Cranford, N.J.) grabbed the second spot on the event with a mark of 14.750, while sophomore Matthew Felleman (Medway, Mass.) tied for third with Stanford's John Martin at 14.600.
On the heels of his Big Ten Championship performance on the pommel horse, sophomore Craig Hernandez (Libertyville, Ill.) topped the event with a score of 15.400 to clear the field by nearly one-half of a point. Hernandez was joined by teammate Felix Aronovich (Kiryat Bialik, Israel) in the top-five, as Aronovich rocked his way to a score of 14.800.
On the parallel bars, Aronovich took top billing with a score of 15.050 followed by Trevor Howard (Columbus, Ohio) posting a 14.900 to finish second.
The Nittany Lions will look to claim their 13th NCAA title in school history and first since 2007, when they won the title as the host institution of the event. The team/all-around finals will begin at 7 p.m. and live video and scoring of the event will be available at the Championships Central page or by clicking here.