The Feb. 3 midday meet for the men’s gymnastics team was, relatively, quite successful — except in terms of the final score.

Illinois secured the victory over Iowa, 404.700-401.850.

Looking at the final score for the meet, the men posted a good number, much better than against Minnesota a week ago. Six points better, which is leaps and bounds ahead of where the Hawkeyes were before.

The Hawkeyes started off strong on the floor, a pleasant surprise for the team and its fans. A not-so-pleasant surprise was the pommel horse score, however; lower than its floor score, and lower than Illinois’ score, it set Iowa back just a little bit further. Illinois’ floor score was a very strong 2.550 points ahead of Iowa’s.

The Hawkeyes dominated in the rings event, though – the team score was a solid 0.700 points higher than Illinois’, thanks to only one individual score below 13 points.

In the vault event, the Hawkeyes scraped by with a better team score, but only just barely so. At that point, the Hawkeyes were only 1.950 points behind the Illini.

The Hawkeyes pulled even tighter by decreasing the difference by another 0.05 after completing the parallel bars, but that’s where the gains ended. The Illini came back with a fury in the final event, the high bar, scoring 0.950 points better than Iowa and securing the victory.

Iowa, if not closing the gap entirely, might have at least kept Illinois from increasing its margin of victory had not the Hawkeyes fallen three times in that last event. But as it was, the final score was still comparatively close.