Even though the No. 16 Illinois women’s gymnastics team will compete in the biggest meet of its season this weekend, the team still thinks of it like any other competition. 

Two weeks removed from finishing second overall behind No. 7 Michigan and ahead of No. 13 Nebraska at the NCAA Morgantown Regional, the Illini will look to pull off another upset at NCAA Championships.

“(The coaches) just want us to picture this as any other meet,” junior Sarah Fiedler said. “It’s really exciting to make it to nationals, but we’re not done yet. We still have a job to do once we get there, so we have to just pretend like we’re back at Kenney (Gym) or Huff (Hall) just doing our thing.”

Illinois will carry a lot of momentum into nationals this weekend in Los Angeles. The Illini are coming off a season-high 196.450 at the Big Ten Championships and a 196.025 at regionals, which was good enough to beat Nebraska and advance.

The Illini will be the underdog yet again this weekend, as they are ranked last among the 12 teams competing at nationals. Although the field includes Big Ten foes such as Michigan and Minnesota as well as No. 1 Florida, the team isn’t worried about its competition.

“Regardless of who we’re up against, we need to do our job,” Fiedler said. “The teams we’re competing against aren’t messing with our heads at all, we need to just stay together and focus on ourselves and do our best.”

Head coach Kim Landrus added that all 11 teams the Illini will compete against are extremely well-coached and very talented programs that will display top-level gymnastics.

With the level of competition so high, Illinois will need to be flawless on every event to make it to Super Six, where the top-six teams advance, later in the weekend. Landrus said the team is in a position to do just that and maybe even hit its seasonlong goal of going 24-for-24.

“We’ve prepared extremely well, we’re definitely in a position to go out there and hit our routines, and now we just need to do our gymnastics,” Landrus said.

The Illini will compete in the Olympic order at nationals, which means they will compete on vault bars and beam before ending on floor.

“That’s what we compete for home meets,” Fiedler said. “Any order we’re fine with, we’ve been competing in the hardest order ending on beam, but obviously we’ve proven now that we’re a strong enough team that we can do that. Olympic order is awesome because floor is a really exciting high-energy event to end on.”

To succeed, Illinois will need disregard the pressure and focus on the little things it has been working on all year.

“Basically, we’re treating it like any other meet and working on those little small details because ultimately that’s what helped us make it to nationals,” Fiedler said. “The stuck landings, the handstands, we’re trying to tune up all the little details.”

Illinois will be making the trip to nationals for the third time in five years with four upperclassmen — seniors Alina Weinstein and Jaclyn Kantecki and juniors Fiedler and Amber See — on the team who have competed at nationals before.

Both the upperclassmen and underclassmen will play a big role in Illinois’ success, and for freshman such as Giana O’Connor, competing on such a big stage, is both exciting and terrifying.

“I’m a little nervous,” O’Connor said. “I’ve heard its pretty fun, really loud and there’s a lot of energy. I don’t really know what to expect, but I’m excited for it.”

Feelings are also mixed for upperclassmen such as Kantecki, who said she is both happy and sad to have one more meet left in her career.

“It’s definitely bittersweet,” Kantecki said. “I think had we not made it, I would have felt like there was a lot of unfinished business after regionals, so I’m glad we’ll be able to end our careers on a high note at NCAAs.”

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