March 28, 2015
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -
By Anita Nham, GoPSUSports.com Student Staff Writer
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - The 2015 Big Ten Champions. That's just one name to call the Penn State men's gymnastics team. But these Nittany Lions are more than that - they're warriors.
"I was just thrilled with the guys' efforts and being relentless," said head coach Randy Jepson. "We talked a lot about being in warrior mode, what that means, and I've seen glimpses of it, but I haven't seen my team have that for a while and we've struggled in some years where we haven't stepped up and really knocked it out the park when we needed to be warriors, but we did it tonight."
Penn State outscored Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Nebraska and Ohio State with a final team score of 436.700 to capture the conference crown in an electrifying and close fashion after having to overcome misses, falls and injuries.
The championship came down to the wire in the final rotation. It was a close matchup between Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Penn State with Michigan leading the competition. Michigan ended the night with a score of 434.750, a 72.850 lead over Penn State.
However, the men's gymnastics team didn't let that deficient affect them as sophomore Christian McSwain, sophomore Dominic DiFulvio, freshmen Thad Lawson and senior Matthew Felleman all had great routines in floor exercise. They brought the team within 13.15 points of tying for first place.
In came junior Trevor Howard, the final performance of the evening for Penn State. Even though Howard knew that the Big Ten title was on the line, this didn't bother him.
"[There wasn't a lot of pressure]," said Howard. "I had this feeling before in the NCAA's when it was here [two years ago] and this was three times better because I know that I can hit this set. I've had a lot of injuries that's kind of held me back this year, but in my last pass, I could see in my peripheral vision, the whole crowd standing up and yelling as loud as they could, and that just gave me the final drive to push through the last pass and just put it on my feet, so I didn't really feel any pressure. I knew I was at home, my family was behind me and my brothers were warriors and I was ready to deliver for them."
Howard needed to earn a score higher than 13.15 to give Penn State the Big Ten win and he did just that. He finished the night off with a score of 15.100, and coach Jepson had no hesitation when placing Howard last in the lineup.
"[Howard's] freshmen year, he was the NCAA floor champion on that same floor, in that same spot," said coach Jepson. "If there's any guy you want going last, it's the NCAA floor exercise champion and he's a warrior. He just is. When he came out to do the floor set, I knew that he would make it, I didn't have a doubt...[After the routine, I told Howard] `I had you last because I knew you would be a warrior. I'll take a whole team of warriors just like you," and it was a great moment."
The Nittany Lions opened with a bye in rotation one, after being introduced to roaring applause from the 1,060 fans inside Rec Hall.
"It's an honor and privilege to win at home with this crowd, the best crowd I've ever experienced," said Felleman. "I couldn't be happier to do it at home."
In addition to the team win, Felleman won the all-around title with a career-best score of 87.200.
"I'm still shocked right now because I wasn't thinking about my all-around score at all going through the competition," said Felleman. "I was 100 percent team right there and that [win] just surprised me."
The men's gymnastics team started the competition on pommel horse in rotation two where they posted a final score of 69.250. Senior Craig Hernandez recorded 15.200, the highest score of the evening.
Still rings were next in rotation three. Penn State tallied a team score of 74.950 and Howard earned a career-high score of 16.100.
Next up was vault on rotation four. Lawson posted a career-high of 15.050 to push Penn State into fourth place in team standings with 217.950.
The Nittany Lions headed to parallel bars for rotation five. Felleman, DiFulvio, and junior Leroy Clarke recorded high scores for the team and junior Alexis Torres started to compete, but was unable to finish due to injury.
Freshman Quest Hayden subbed in for Torres and made his Big Ten Championships debut.
"I was just trying to be super calm," said Hayden. "I knew that we were going to be down a point for Alexis, for me subbing for him, so when I went in, I just had to be calm and hit a clean routine."
With a teammate out, the men's gymnastics team knew that they had to recover. Lawson opened up high bars in rotation six and with his solid performance, he got the team's and crowd's energy back up. Clarke, Felleman, Howard and Hayden also competed to give Penn State a team score of 72.350.
Penn State was in fourth place with a score of 361.900, but the floor exercise helped to win it all.
"I looked down the line at the floor lineup, knew we had a very good floor lineup and that we could win it," said coach Jepson. "I pulled them together and said, `Guys, this is within our reach. We just do our job and it can be ours,' and they did that."
With the first Big Ten title in seven years, coach Jepson couldn't be more thrilled for the men's gymnastics team.
"I'm just so happy for them," said coach Jepson. "They pay a big price, they really do. We ask a lot of our guys and to have them step up and receive the trophy and get the accolade, today they were the best team. That was wonderful to see. They really deserved it. There's more to the season, we got to come back tomorrow and do a good job and then a couple more weeks, we go to the NCAA's, so it all starts over again, but for tonight, they're the Big Ten Champions. I'm really happy and proud of them."