Feb. 13, 2010

Complete Results

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - The No. 2 Illinois men's gymnastics team (7-0, 6-0 Big Ten) gave the home crowd plenty to cheer about Saturday night at Huff Hall, as the Illini won on all six individual events, in addition to the all-around, en route to a 350.650-342.150 defeat of No. 7 Minnesota (6-5, 0-5 Big Ten).

"I'm very happy with the team's performance tonight," associate head coach Justin Spring said. "After a rough couple of events, we were able to bounce back with some incredible routines in the latter half of the night. It's still early in the season, but we have a lot of potential and there's room still to grow as a team."

Junior Paul Ruggeri led the team with first-place finishes in the all-around (87.200), floor exercise (14.750), vault (16.050) and high bar (16.100), while classmate Daniel Ribeiro won on pommel horse with a score of 14.750. Senior Brian Liscovitz and sophomore Anthony Sacramento rounded out the group with season-high scores and their first event titles of the season, as Liscovitz placed first on parallel bars (14.600) and Sacramento tied on rings (14.650) with classmate Tyler Mizoguchi.

Several other season and career highs also highlighted the night, as Ruggeri's score on high bar was a new career high and school record under the FIG Open Ended "Code of Points" introduced in 2008. Mizoguchi posted a new career high in the all-around (86.450) and tied his career best on vault (15.800), while senior Chad Wiest tallied a career high on high bar (13.500) and sophomore C.J. Padera (vault; 15.600) and senior Luke Stannard (15.500; vault) topped their previous season highs. Additionally, junior Kyle Moe notched a new career high on rings (13.900), as did freshman Yoshi Mori on floor exercise (13.800).

Illinois is back in action next weekend for the first of three straight road meets, beginning at No. 5 Penn State on Saturday, Feb. 20 at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT. The meet will be televised by the Big Ten Network on Feb. 27 at 12:00 p.m. ET/11 a.m. CT.