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Despite a relief in their schedule combined with their perceived growth from competing against No. 1 Georgia, a number of falls during the first rotation of Friday night’s meet at Arizona proved to be the Bruins’ undoing as they were upset 195.335-194.7 by the 14th-ranked Wildcats.

The sixth-ranked Bruins kicked off the meet on the uneven bars with half of its lineup unable to complete a clean routine. Even junior Ashley Peckett, who has hit all 16 of her routines this season, slipped to the floor on a difficult release move to record her lowest score of the season. Meanwhile, the Wildcats successfully hit each of their routines on the vault, giving them a near one-point lead over the Bruins heading into the second rotation.

After a few mental foibles on the bars, Coach Valorie Kondos Field recollected her young squad to incite the possibility of an impressive comeback.

“The early mistakes were costly,” Kondos Field said. “But I told them, ‘We’re going to win, we’re going to inch our way back. It starts right here, right now.’”

The girls quickly responded to their coach’s tenacious words by regrouping themselves en route to an improved 49.025 performance on the vault.

“They didn’t bury their hands in the sand,” Kondos Field said. “They fought hard and got themselves together.”

After closing in on the Wildcats’ lead after a clean showing on the floor, the Bruins were forced to deliver under pressure during their final rotation. After freshman Jalynne Dantzscher started off on the beam with a morale-crushing 8.550, the remaining five gymnasts needed to be perfect on arguably the sport’s most difficult apparatus to come out of Tucson with a win. Senior Kate Richardson and sophomore Jordan Schwikert responded with back-to-back scores of 9.875. However, the Wildcats outmatched the Bruins by amassing a combined score of 49.075 on the floor to clinch the victory.

With last season’s phenomenon sophomore Tasha Schwikert and the team’s co-captain Michelle Selesky still inactive due to injury, the team’s freshmen have received extraordinary amounts of meet experience due to a depleted roster.

“If Tasha was healthy, [Melissa] Chan was healthy, if we had a healthy team, our freshman would’ve learned half of what it had to from the sidelines,” Kondos Field said. “It’s hard to go through a meet like this. We should’ve done better, but we never gave up. This experience was just another experience for our young team.”

Inexperience was evident on the uneven bars as a change in routine proved to be a factor in the young team’s failure to take advantage of its scheduling circumstances.

“The last few weekends, we really pumped ourselves up mentally for those meets,” Kondos Field said. “We just let down mentally for this meet, not thinking that we would lose our focus.”

The team will seek to regain its concentration as they return back to Pauley Pavilion in a dual meet against Stanford and San Jose State on March 5.