'It was really like fire in here': How No. 2 OU knocked off No. 1 Michigan with dominant bars performance

NORMAN — OU women’s gymnastics coach K.J. Kindler pulled out a stick this week to try to get her team motivated.

Kindler has said all season that her team has the best uneven bars lineup in the country, but the No. 2 Sooners had struggled with landings, opening the door for top-ranked Michigan to come into Friday’s meet at Lloyd Noble Center with the top-ranked bars lineup.

Until the stick came out.

“Every time they stuck (a landing), they put a sticker on the stick,” Kindler said, explaining the stickers were not only for bars dismounts but all events. “At the end of 2½ days, the stick was full of stickers, because that’s how many times they’d stuck in 2½ days. Just trying to demonstrate to them physically, ‘This is how often you do this. This is how easy this is for you. Don’t make it hard when you get to the arena.’”

It worked.

OU used its highest-ever bars score — 49.825 — to set the tone for the rest of the night as the Sooners knocked off the top-ranked Wolverines 198.475-197.900 in front of a crowd of 7,478.

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The score was tied for the second-best in program history, behind only a 198.500 against Florida in 2015.

OU made Kindler’s point emphatically in the second rotation, with six performances of 9.925 or better that includes five stuck landings.

After Danielle Sievers got OU started with a 9.925, Katherine LeVasseur followed with a career-high 9.975. Ragan Smith posted a 9.925, before the Sooners ripped off a barrage of near-perfection.

On her Senior Night, Karrie Thomas posted a career-high 9.975, Jordan Bowers followed with a career-high 9.975 of her own before Audrey Davis equaled her career high by keeping the 9.975 streak alive.

“When you have momentum like that, it’s just out of your hands,” Kindler said. “It’s like nothing wrong could happen. You just felt that kind of elation.

“It was a wildly enthusiastic group every time someone stuck a landing.”

The Sooners’ bars score tied the highest score in program history in any event, equaling OU’s performance in the floor exercise against Florida in 2019.

OU’s previous high in the bars was 49.725.

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But Kindler said the turning point in the meet came before the dominant bars performance.

It wasn’t with Bowers’ first career perfect 10 — though that was important too.

Freshman Danae Fletcher just started working on a 1½ vault this week, upping her start value from what she’d done to this point.

The Sooners wanted to match Michigan’s strong vault lineup, and planned to only unveil Fletcher’s new vault if everyone in front of her hit their vaults.

They did, and Fletcher showed out with a career-high 9.950.

“She’s just kind of like a cat finding her feet,” Kindler said.

Fletcher said she’d only done that vault on the hard landing surface twice before nailing it on Friday.

The last time OU squared off with Michigan, in last season’s NCAA Championships in Fort Worth, Texas, the meet went down to the wire, with the Wolverines finishing strong on the balance beam to edge the Sooners 192.2500-192.1625 to win the program’s first national title.

But by the time the final rotation came around Friday, it would’ve taken catastrophe on the Sooners’ part for Michigan to pull out the victory.

In the last moments before the final rotation began, Bell Johnson bounced along the side of the floor exercise mat and her team soon joined in.

It didn’t take long for much of the crowd to catch on, sending the crowd in program history into a crescendo.

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“Once they caught on, it was really like fire in here,” Kindler said. “Really they had to calm down before the music started just for Bell to be able to hear it.”

The attendance was the second-largest in program history behind the 2019 meet against UCLA, which was also a 1-2 matchup.

“I have never in my life experienced anything like this energy-wise,” Fletcher said.

The Sooners didn’t go out quietly, though, posting a season-high 49.675 on the floor exercise, tied for the fourth-highest score in the event in program history.

That included career-high scores from a trio of freshmen — 9.975 from Fletcher, 9.925 from Sievers, and a 9.95 from Bowers.

Earlier in the day, the NCAA announced the Sooners would host an NCAA Regional from March 30-April 2 at Lloyd Noble Center.

Illinois was originally slated to host but had to withdraw due to campus commitments.

After the meet, Kindler announced that a pair of seniors — Allie Stern and Olivia Trautman — would return for a fifth season.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: OU vs Michigan women's gymnastics: No. 2 Sooners beat No. 1 Wolverines