CHICAGO – In what was their most lop-sided victory of the season, the Illini men defeated UIC 354.850-342.950 Saturday in Chicago.

The victory was never in doubt for Illinois, who led after all six rotations in the dual meet.

The Illini were resting two of their most prolific scorers in Wes Haagensen and Paul Ruggeri, but they still managed to come away with a very convincing victory in their penultimate regular-season meet. The victory came as vindication to head coach Yoshi Hayasaki who had been waiting for his team to meet its full potential.

“Finally, all the training, the workouts, what we have been doing for the last four or five weeks is really starting to pay off.” Hayasaki said after the meet. “But I think that we still need to work on execution. Just hitting our routines won’t be good enough to win a Big Ten Championship.”

UIC head coach CJ Johnson said after the meet that his team wasn’t focusing on winning but rather that they were paying attention to “their routines.”

Daniel Ribeiro took the pommel horse crown, Roger Pasek took the event title in floor exercise and vault and Tyler Yamauchi’s score of 15.500 on the still rings was the best on the night.