April 11, 2014
NCAA Championships at Michigan |
Final Stats •Individual Qualifiers Ann Arbor, Mich. • Crisler Center | 429.800 No. 6 Penn State |
ANN ARBOR, Mich. - The No. 6 Penn State men's gymnastics team earned a sixth-place finish in the NCAA team and all-around finals Saturday evening at Crisler Arena. The Nittany Lions logged a pair of top-3 team scores on both the floor exercise (74.300) and the pommel horse (72.200) to finish with a total team score of 429.800.
Michigan claimed the NCAA national title with a top score of 445.050, while Oklahoma and Stanford finished second and third with scores of 441.650 and 436.300, respectively.
Junior Craig Hernandez (Libertyville, Ill.) and sophomore Trevor Howard (Columbus, Ohio) led the Nittany Lions with a pair of top-3 performances to advance to tomorrow's individual event finals. Sophomore Alexis Torres (Catano, Puerto Rico) also qualified for tomorrow's competition with a top-10 showing on the rings.
Hernandez highlighted the evening with a third-place finish on the pommel horse. Posting a 15.300, he led PSU for the second consecutive night on the apparatus, finishing behind first-place finishers Michael Reed (Oklahoma) and Sam Mikulak (Michigan).
Howard and Torres led the Nittany Lions on the still rings with two top-10 performances. Howard finished tied for fifth with a 15.000, while Torres put up a 14.950 to place him in a three-way tie for seventh with Iowa's Matt Loochtan and Springfield's Ryan Ponce.
Torres closed out the team finals with one more top-10 performance. He recorded a 15.250 to put him in a three-way tie for 10th with Oklahoma's Alec Robin and Ohio State's Jake Martin. Robin and Martin won the NCAA tiebreaker to advance to tomorrow's finals on the floor exercise.
As the final competitor of the night for the Nittany Lions, sophomore Trevor Howard (Columbus, Ohio) swung to a career-high score of 15.500 on the parallel bars to slot him third overall. Howard finished ninth overall on the all-around with a total score of 85.100. He also tallied two more top-20 performances with a 13th-place finish on the floor exercise (15.200) and 19th place finish on the vault (14.800).
Penn State closes out the NCAA championships tomorrow evening, where individual national champions will be crowned in the individual event finals Saturday, April at 7 p.m. in Crisler Arena. The following Nittany Lions will compete for an individual national title tomorrow: Pommel Horse - Craig Hernandez Still Rings - Trevor Howard, Alexis Torres Parallel Bars - Trevor Howard