The Illinois women’s gymnastics team wasn’t at practice on Monday.

Instead of immediately getting back in the gym like they normally do, head coach Kim Landrus switched the No. 19 Illini’s off day from Wednesday to Monday in order to give them an extra day to build confidence before Saturday’s meet against Penn State at Huff Hall.

“I gave the team an extra day off this week hopefully to just mentally, emotionally and physically get them a little bit more refreshed, and I think that throughout the course of the week it will help them respond,” Landrus said.

Landrus said Illinois had two strong events, and two events that weren’t as strong as they needed to be last week, which led to the 196.300-195.450 loss against the Buckeyes.

The Illini started and ended the meet well, with season-high team scores on bars and beam, but stumbled in the middle on vault without junior Amber See, who wasn’t in action due to injury.

This weekend, Illinois will host the Nittany Lions, a team that has have been up and down this season and lost two of their last three meets despite scoring a season high last weekend. But as sophomore Sunny Kato said, they can still win.

“Penn State is another school that has the ability to beat us,” Kato said.

Senior Alina Weinstein agreed with Kato on what Penn State is capable of.

“They’re a great team, any team in the Big Ten is great competition for us,” Weinstein said. “They just came off of one of their season highs, so it really could be anybody’s meet, it depends on who shows up.”

The Illini will compete at home for the third time this season and try to continue the streak of home wins.

“We have been very comfortable and confident at home so that’s definitely an advantage, but everyone we’ve faced has had great meets, so I think that it will be a really great showing,” Weinstein said. “We really need to be as prepared as possible and that will be determined in practice.”

Illinois will once again be competing alongside the men’s team, which will also face Penn State.

“Honestly, we still compete the same routines,” Landrus said. “We still have 24 routines, so to me I look at it exactly the same. We have one job to get done and it doesn’t matter if there’s a guys team in there or not.”

The team has been practicing all four events equally despite excelling on two last week and hopes to carry over its practice performances to the competition.

“All of the events are equally important,” Weinstein said. “We have to be on our game, and we have to put together all four events the way we know we can in practice.”

Illinois has also been trying to simulate competition in practice to better prepare for the meet.

“Every turn in practice has been like a competition for me. I’ve been picturing myself in the arena and putting that pressure on me so when the time comes I’ll know how to react.”

Nicholas can be reached at [email protected] and @IlliniSportsGuy.