In its first road dual meet, as well as the opening meet of the Big Ten season, the Iowa men’s gymnastics team fell to Illinois, 354.900-339.400, in Champaign, Ill., on Jan.29. First-year head coach JD Reive saw plenty of room for improvement in the team’s performance.

“It went a little rough, but we still put up a decent team score,” he said in a release. “It wasn’t quite what I was hoping for, and we see a chance to take some steps forward from this and really work on our consistency.”

The standout performer of the meet was sophomore Anton Gryshayev, who set a school record on the rings with a score of 15.100. Gryshayev broke the record of 14.900 he set on Jan. 23 against Illinois-Chicago.

Iowa’s best team event came in the vault, where the Hawkeyes tied Illinois with a score of 62.900. Ben Ketelsen and Matt McGrath both scored a 15.900 in the event for the Hawkeyes, which tied for first place with Illinois’ Yoshi Mori.

The next action for the Hawkeyes will come Thursday, when Mike Jiang, Ketelsen, and McGrath travel to Las Vegas for the Winter Cup.

— by Ryan Murphy