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Show Keeping the home streak alive BY BEN JASAREVIC /STAFF WRITER PHOTO BY ERIN BURNS n impressive first half showing from the Utes gave them a large enough lead to beat Idaho State at home Wednesday night, 59-40, despite a poor second-half performance. "There might not be any pretty wins for this team. It's just gonna be survive and go to the next one," said head coach Anthony Levrets. Utah started off the game with a 7-0 run, relying on a three from freshman Tanaeya Boclair, a pair of free throws from freshman Joeseta Fatuesi and, finally, a long jumper from junior Danielle Rodriguez. Idaho State picked up their first points of the night on a three-pointer that bounced around the rim before falling. A tip-in from sophomore Paige Crozon gave the Utes a 12-point lead with just over seven minutes left in the first half. The Bengals got a layup and a tip-in a minute later to cut the lead to single digits, 21-13. Little did the Bengals know that the tip-in would result in their last points of the half. Utah strung a 15-0 run to go into halftime, with Fatuesi scoring the last six of the run and putting her at a game-high 10 at the intermission. Utes led 36-13. Senior Taryn Wicijowski opened the second half with four quick points in 45 seconds to equal her whole first half output and push the Utes' lead to a game-high 27. A 14-2 Idaho State run that lasted over seven minutes, however, cut the Utes' lead down to 15. The Utah offense was much sloppier in the second half, committing 12 turnovers after only turning it over twice in the first half. Utah only made four field goals in the second half. "We seemed to have lost our energy in the second half," Wicijowski said. "I think that goes with, like, when you build up a big lead, you kind of just get comfortable instead of coming in the second half and [saying] ... 'We are gonna take it to them and put it away.'" Utah would soon push its lead to over 20 and sustain it until the final second of the game, when the Bengals hit a free throw, cutting it to 19. The Utes won 59-40, led by Fatuesi's 16 points. She got 10 of those from the free throw line on 1011 shooting. Fatuesi's impressive night was noticed in the rebounding department as well, as she pulled down a game-high seven. "She's just gonna keep getting better," Levrets said. "She just has such a great demeanor about her. It's gonna allow her to turn into 'I think she's gonna be a superstar before she's all done'" Utah is 3-0 on the home stand. Next up is BYU on Saturday, with tip-off set at noon. b.jasarevic@chronicle.utah.edu @Beniasarevic A BY RYAN MILLER /ASST. SPORTS PHOTOS BY BRENT UBERTY EDITOR ast season during the 2014 NCAA preliminaries, the Red Rocks fixated on every move and every flaw of every routine, and soon it was too late. "Gymnasts do better when they're in a certain zone, and most of us do better when we're having fun and relaxed, you know, just going through the motions" said senior Georgia Dabritz. That's not what happened at the prelims, and at the end of the day, the Utes were left on the outside looking in to the Super Six. Heading into the preliminary round, the Red Rocks had all the momentum in the world. Utah had won the Pac-12 championship and followed it up with a solid regional performance, but during the prelim competition, the Utes' minds started working to a fault. "We tried really hard, but I think we tried too hard, and it didn't end up the way we wanted it," Dabritz said. "When your routine is done, you don't really want to remember what happened, and I think when we were out there at prelims that night, we were thinking about every little detail, and it kind of got in our heads a bit." Heading into the 2014-15 campaign, the Red Rocks have once again set their sights on the Super Six, and this time they hope to use the disappointment of last season to their advantage. "We have learned a lot from our mistakes the past two years, and I think the freshmen are really talented, and them coming in with a fresh new mind will definitely help as well" Dabritz said. Those "fresh new minds" though, have a lot of learning to do. Utah co-head coach Megan Marsden said the biggest difference between high-level club gymnastics and college is the amount of time a gymnast will compete. A few meets a year turns into a grueling schedule with a meet each week, all with higher expectations. Those higher expectations exist in practices as well. Each training session, the Red Rocks are expected to perform at a high level. "[The freshmen] quickly learn that the expectation is not to have a good practice once every two weeks': Marsden said. "They hear about it. And we talk about it, how that will bite them in the butt" L Performing well in practice naturally leads to performing well in meets, and Marsden wants her team to be ready to do routines, no matter what the condition. "There's going to be a time when you're competing when you have a cold, or when you have broken up with a boyfriend or when you flunked a test" Marsden said. "There are days when you'll have to hit that routine on your worst day, not on a day you are waiting for adrenaline. We teach them that in the preseason. And we train like that and have high expectations every training session, so they learn you have to bring it even on your worst day. Sometimes freshmen take a year to figure it out. With this group, we're hoping to bring them along sooner than that:' Utah has high hopes for its incoming freshmen class, and the Utes are hoping they can help them on the event that turned into their Achilles' heel a season ago — the balance beam. "We are more than capable on that event" Dabritz said. "We show it in the gym everyday" The Red Rocks, however, struggled to show it in competition last season, and it served as poetic justice that a strong beam routine by Nebraska allowed the Huskers to jump over Utah in the prelims and keep the Utes out of the Super Six. With all the past failures on the beam, the first step to correcting the beam struggles is to forget about past mistakes. That's something Dabritz thinks the freshmen can help with. "When we get out there, we start thinking about it too much, and some of the past memories start coming back, and we start worrying about [them] and try too hard, and when you have all those things in your head, you have so much going on that it doesn't work in your favor" Dabritz said. "This year one of our biggest things is getting our minds right on the beam. We have four new girls out there that can help us on the beam, and I think that will be really helpful because it puts us in a new mindset. We are a new team, it's a new year." It won't only be the freshmen providing reinforcements on the beam. Junior Kassandra Lopez will be returning from injury, and Dabritz said one of her personal goals was to become more consistent on the beam. 8 { THECHRONY I NEWS I OPINION I ARTS I SPORTS I THURSDAY, DECEMBER 11, 2014 "I think we have improved our weakest event" Marsden said. "We have added talent on the balance beam with some of our freshmen and Kassandra coming back. If the other events can stay as strong as they were last year and our beam moves up, that's what we need. That will be a big difference-maker this year in how competitive we are" The optimism of what the new class brings is added to the experience of the upperclassmen, and the Utes are hoping those two things will provide better mental toughness. The juniors and seniors are eager to pass down what they have learned. "I remember as a freshman looking up to seniors, and I always had such great confidence in them, and I would like to think I have taken that role on with our freshmen this year" said senior Tory Wilson. With experienced seniors, as well as talented freshmen, the Utes have every reason to believe they can outperform last year's disappointing results. "We feel like we're a talented enough team to be one of those teams, and we feel like the last couple of years we have sort of shot ourselves in the foot in the preliminary round" Marsden said. It will be Dabritz's and Wilson's last chance to make it to the Super Six, and both are motivated to make it special, but that's something they are trying not to dwell on. "I'm trying not to think about it too much, otherwise it just gets in your head," Wilson said. That's just what the Red Rocks are trying to avoid in 2015. r.miller@chronicle.utah.edu @millerjryan 9 |