BAYLOR BEATS UMHB

Sunday, February 11

Waco, Texas

3PM

Baylor

279.870

272.465

Mary Hardin-Baylor

BEARS BEAT UMHB

BAYLOR BEATS UMHB

2/11/2024 5:41:00 PM | Acrobatics & Tumbling

By Jerry Hill
Baylor Bear Insider

WACO, Texas – Following an underwhelming season-opening win over Texas Lutheran last week, Baylor acrobatics & tumbling coach Felecia Mulkey said the only thing that frustrates her is when "they don't live up to their potential."

In the Bears' home opener versus UMHB Sunday afternoon at the Ferrell Center, they improved their scores in 14 of the 20 heats and topped their previous overall score by more than 4 ½ points, defeating the 11^th-ranked Crusaders fairly comfortably, 279.870 to 272.465.

But with a disappointing performance in the closing team event, getting outscored 97.49-96.92, "it doesn't feel like a win, because that's very uncharacteristic of who we are," Mulkey said. Baylor had several stumbles in the team event, including one by All-Americans Bayley Humphrey and Jordan Gruendler.

"We had I don't know how many falls," Mulkey said. "I think both team events were scored entirely too high, quite honestly. But we've got to hit everything. All of those things that came down should not have come down. So, we've got to fix that."

The top-ranked and eight-time defending NCATA national champions did win their 29^th-consecutive meet and fifth in a row against a UMHB program that is in just its fifth season and second under former Baylor A&T student-athlete Raffaela Scotto. But this was easily the closest margin, with all four previous matchups decided by more than 20 points.

Besides the team event, the Crusaders (0-1) also won the compulsory toss heat, 9.80-9.70. With the widest margin coming in the acro heat (9.65-8.95), the Bears had almost a 1 ½-point lead in compulsory, 38.70-37.25.

Baylor recorded its highest score of the meet in the five-element heat of acro with a 9.95 and padded its cushion overall with a 29.10-28.35 edge in the acro event.

UMHB had its strongest showing in the pyramid event, getting a pair of 9.80 scores in the synchronized and open heats, but the Bears had almost a three-point cushion at halftime, 97.40-94.65.

With significantly higher start values, Baylor dominated in the toss and tumbling events after the intermission, getting near-perfect 9.90 scores by freshman Emily Bott in the tumbling aerial pass and senior Kristen McCain in the open pass. Those two also scored a 9.50 in the duo pass, while junior Rakel Jeffries fist-pumped after a 9.75 score in the six-element pass.

"I think all the (scores of 9.0 or higher) are great," Mulkey said. "We had a lot of changes just yesterday because we had a sickness. So, we had to change a ton of things. All the things we changed did wonderful. It was the things we didn't change, so we just have to wake up."

In a rematch of last year's NCATA national championship, which Baylor won by more than 10 points, the Bears will host second-ranked Oregon (1-0) on Feb. 25 with another 3 p.m. start time. The Ducks, who opened its season on Saturday with a slim victory at home over No. 9 Hawaii Pacific, will return the favor and host BU on April 5 in Eugene.

"I'm excited about it," Mulkey said of Baylor's next meet. "I think we're in the right place now. We needed this little bit of adversity, and not do as well as we should have, so we'll be ready to go in a couple weeks."