After five rotations in Friday’s NCAA Men’s Gymnastics National Championship team finals, Illinois trailed No. 1 Oklahoma by just .550 points. With just parallel bars left – an event senior Justin Spring said the Illini were a force to be reckoned with – the team’s first title since 1989 was still within reach.

The Illini did their part to try to take the lead, scoring a 37.875 with solid performances from seniors Justin Spring (9.675) and Adam Pummer (9.625) and sophomore Wesley Haagensen (9.600). But in the end Oklahoma’s score on vault was too much for the Illini to overcome. The lowest Sooner score that counted on vault was a 9.250.

“We had every other school on our side at the end of that team finals meet, we had the meet, it was so close,” Spring said. “Any given day, any different arena, it could have been different.

“Oklahoma had to make one mistake and they didn’t do that.”

The Illini finished the meet in Norman, Okla., with a score of 220.975, a season-high, while the Sooners finished with a 221.400. Stanford took third place with a score of 218.375. The team’s second-place finish was the highest finish at nationals since 1989 when the team took the title. Oklahoma’s win marked the fourth time in five years that it was crowned team champions.

Even with a heavily-biased crowd and home-arena advantage at the Lloyd Noble Center, the Illini finished the meet with season-high scores on parallel bars (37.975) and pommel horse (34.675), in addition to Thursday’s season-best high bar score of 38.050.

“It was obviously disappointing, but you can’t hang your head competing like we did,” said sophomore Ross Bradley, who scored a 9.575 on high bar.

A positive for the Illini on Friday night was Spring’s second-place finish in the all-around competition and Haagensen’s fourth-place finish. Spring finished with a 55.600, while Haagensen had a 54.475; each earned All-America honors. Spring finished just 0.400 points behind Oklahoma’s Jonathan Horton, who scored a 56.000.

Back in Illinois’ lineup was Pummer, who missed the Big Ten Championships with an acute bruise and a protruding collar bone, and sophomore Tyler Yamauchi, who had an injured ankle. Notably missing from the Illini lineup was sophomore Chris Silcox, who injured himself on the high bar with bad turns in Thursday’s warmup to the qualifying session. He then had to be taken out of Friday’s finals after he overturned his arm and injured his shoulder during the first event rotation.

The Illini began the meet on high bar with a 37.850 to take the early lead. Spring recorded a 9.675, while Pummer had a 9.350. It was on floor exercise, though, that the Illini had a 36.925 and lost some of the ground they could have gained had their team been entirely healthy. The Illini posted three scores in the 9.0 range, but had to count Bradley’s score of 8.450. The Illini, though, did post the top pommel horse score on the day with a 34.675. Freshman Chris Lung led the team with a 9.000, while senior Ted Brown, the Illini’s pommel horse specialist, had an 8.975.

Aside from some of the small errors, Hayasaki said his team’s performance was the “most consistent and best effort” he had seen all season. The Illini’s 220.975 topped their previous best (220.000) against Army on Senior Day on March 11. Even with their best score, the crowd made more of an impact than the Illini would have liked.

“They overwhelmed us at the arena, the crowd was entirely behind them,” Hayasaki said. “Unfortunately, those things happen.”

Hayasaki, though, said that no matter what happened to the team this season, it continued to persevere to have an amazing year. Haagensen put it the same way.

“The way we came together in the end as a team was incredible,” Haagensen said. “Every single one of us gave it our best and put our hearts out for this one time. It was incredible.”