His legs circling gracefully, redshirt freshman Devan Cote glided through his pommel horse routine. A buzz grew among his teammates at Cliff Keen Arena as he prepared for the dismount.

When he landed, saluting the judges calmly, the No. 3 Michigan men’s gymnastics team erupted. The Wolverines yelled and leaped into the air as if they’d won a championship.

Most people could have predicted the Wolverines’ 347.90-321.55 win Friday night over No. 12 Iowa (0-5 Big Ten, 1-6 overall), but not many would have guessed that Cote would be the emotional star of the meet.

Not even Cote.

“It didn’t really sink in right away,” said Cote, who made his collegiate debut in the meet. “I was kind of in shock.”

Michigan (5-1, 6-1) finished the first rotation with a seven-point lead to give the team plenty of breathing room. But after the opening event, floor, Cote was worried about pommel horse — arguably the toughest event in gymnastics — which was to be the first event of his Michigan career.

Cote finished second on the horse (14.40), just behind sophomore Chris Cameron. Then he hit both his remaining routines.

“It was pretty funny, because he had the same reaction after every routine he did,” senior Joe Catrambone said. “Basically it was just, ‘Oh, well — I hit another one.’ I think inside, Devan was pretty excited about how he performed.”

The scene repeated itself on parallel bars and high bar, Cote’s other two events, with the Hollis, N. H., native smiling bashfully and his teammates exploding in cheers. After the meet, Cote stood in the circle of his teammates on the floor and led them in singing The Victors.

“He’s not that kind of a guy — he’s not going to stomp off and throw his fists around and clap when he hits a set,” senior Scott Bregman said. “We were just trying to make sure everyone knew how awesome he was doing.”

Bregman's comeback was the other story Friday, as he competed for the first time since undergoing season-ending ankle surgery last March. His first pass on floor culminated with an Arabian double pike, a move he had been having trouble with all week in practice.

But he has never fallen on the skill in a meet. And against Iowa, he stuck it cold.

“I wanted to stop right there,” Bregman said. “I’ve never actually completely stuck it in a meet, so I was like, ‘Oh, God, I can’t mess the rest of this up.’ ”

He won the event title (14.85) in just his fifth meet since the start of last year's campaign.

Overall, Michigan increased its hit percentage for the second week in a row. Senior co-captain Phil Goldberg, who finished second on rings (14.60), told his team before the meet to treat Iowa as if it were the nation's top team. He put pressure on his teammates, and they thrived under it.

The sophomore duo of Thomas Kelley and Chris Cameron took home two event titles apiece, with Kelley winning the rings and high bar and Cameron taking the pommel horse and parallel bars, along with the Newt Loken award for best performance of the night.

“I think it was a lot better than Penn State last week," Kelley said, referring to Michigan's last-second loss last Saturday. "I think we had a lot less misses, less one-point falls. But we’re holding ourselves to a little bit higher of a standard."

Michigan coach Kurt Golder was pleased with his team’s showing — the Wolverines beat Iowa by 26.35 points, their largest margin of victory this year. But he cited the parallel bars as an area for improvement in the coming weeks. The event that was the foundation for Michigan’s success in Chicago and near-upset in Penn State looked shaky against Iowa.

“We can be a lot better,” Golder said. “If they recognize that and keep working, they won’t be disappointed at the end. If they get happy because they’ve got a lot of wins under their belt, get a little complacent, that will be our demise.”