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Mizzou gymnastics prepares for Top-10 clash at Oklahoma

KMIZ

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

The No. 10 Mizzou gymnastics team is starting SEC action off with a bang.

The Tigers will take a road trip to Norman, Oklahoma to meet the No. 1 Sooners on Friday, Jan. 17. Head coach Shannon Welker said while he knows it will definitely be a difficult task to go into the Sooner State and grab a win, anything is possible.

Welker also added that he'd rather go up against great teams like this early on in the season to see where his group is at.

"It gives us some time to adjust and be like, alright, what are they doing maybe that we need to adjust to to become better," he said.

You can watch the full press conference with Coach Welker in the video player below.

MU will come into this Top-10 clash fresh off of a second-place finish at the Denver Quad over the weekend. The Tigers topped both Georgia and LIU in that meet, but finished just short of the win behind No. 11 Denver.

Welker said that he felt like that was a meet they could have won, but a difference in landings between week one and week two was a game-changer. Mizzou opened up with strong routines on the bars, but the lineup didn't manage to stick a lot of their landings.

Then, after the uneven bars, the Tigers rotated to the beam, where Welker said he has seen growth this season. However, the Denver Quad meet opened up an opportunity for even more growth as his team heads into conference action.

"Beam, we didn't settle in right there. That wasn't a great rotation for us in that second event. You know, we need to do better on that part right there and we may see...at least one personnel change over on balance beam moving into the into this weekend," Welker said. "I'm not sure which one it is yet. I need to get a couple of days of practice under our belt."

Meanwhile, Mizzou looked powerful on the floor, grabbing the highest score of the meet with 49.450. Through two weeks of competition, that floor score at the Denver Quad ranks sixth nationally.

Despite the second place finish at the event, Welker said his biggest focus for his team is improvement from week-to-week and he definitely saw that in competition out in Denver. He added that his Tigers were likely one strong beam routine shy of grabbing that victory.

As Mizzou tinkers with that rotation on the balance beam, it helps to have a veteran like Helen Hu back in the mix. After taking one year off, the graduate student has returned to action this season. In the Denver Quad, she captured the team's highest mark on the beam and the best of her young season. Welker said she's someone you can always count on, just like money in the bank, but his group needs to find a way to support her efforts.

"We need to step up and support those people too, right, and make sure that they feel like they don't have the weight of the world on their shoulders, as well," Welker said. "Last weekend, I'll get off track here a little bit, but Amy Wier looked fantastic on beam. She just had a little mistake on that dismount, which was much improved. I know the score wasn't better, but the routine was better. So, you know, I think as we get more and more people stepping up...having people like Helen give them that confidence, you know, it's going to be tremendously positive and impactful for us."

Friday's trip to Norman will be the first time the Tigers have faced the Sooners, since Oklahoma joined the SEC ahead of this athletic year. Welker has been to Oklahoma before, near the beginning of his tenure in Columbia, but is excited to go back.

He said the addition of a program like the Sooners, who have won six NCAA National Championships, made an already strong Southeastern Conference, even more stout.

"With great teams like Oklahoma and others, you know, if you can be competitive in our conference I think you can be competitive in the country," Welker said. "I really feel like it's an opportunity for us. Any time we can compete against great teams that really just makes us better and it forces us to get better. So, we're looking forward to the challenge."

Welker said that after the meet against the Sooners he will have a much better idea of where his team stands at this early point in the season. So far, his biggest takeaway through two weeks has been his team's depth.

"I've been we've been happy and that was one of our goals in the first couple weeks was to try to get as many people kind of involved in what we're doing now at a certain point. We're going to have to slim that down a little bit," he said. "I like the depth part. I think the quality's been good. You know, I think, we have worked really hard on the stick, so I think we're going to see that pay off. You know, sometimes you just got to give it a week or two...So, you know, overall I think pretty good. I think we're just going to need more information."

Mizzou and Oklahoma will kickoff the SEC slate on Friday, Jan. 17 at 7:30 p.m.

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Nathalie Jones

Nathalie anchors and reports sports for ABC17. She started working at the station in June 2020.

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