When the No. 7 Michigan women’s gymnastics team arrived in Iowa last Saturday, a win was not only expected, but history did everything short of guaranteeing it. The Wolverines had come out on top the past 11 meetings, winning every contest since 2004.

But falls on the uneven bars and vault halted the streak, giving No. 17 Iowa the victory for the first time in over six years – winning by just .475 points.

“We had a great week of practice this week, and I really thought that we were going to show up more in the competition,” Michigan coach Bev Plocki said. “We started out on the uneven bars and we’re usually pretty clean in that event, but we ended up counting a fall.”

The Wolverines (4-1 Big Ten, 5-1 overall) fell early, both in the competition and physically, as they had to count a fall on the uneven bars during the first rotation. Michigan scored a 48.300 on bars – its lowest total in two seasons.

After rebounding during the second rotation, scoring a 49.250 on vault and minimizing the difference to just .200 between the teams, the Wolverines proceeded to regain the lead after a 49.000-point floor rotation.

It looked as though Michigan would recover from an unimpressive first rotation and continue its winning streak against Iowa (2-1, 3-2). But similar mistakes were made during the final rotation on the balance beam.

Two falls later, the Wolverines once again took a deduction and handed the meet back over to the Hawkeyes, resulting in a final score of 195.375-194.900.

Despite the loss, several team members had career bests, including two of Michigan’s captains.

Senior Kylee Botterman won her third consecutive all-around title in just as many weeks of competition with a score of 39.350. She also took the vault event, giving her nine individual titles through only three competitions.

Botterman’s co-captain, fifth-year senior Jordan Sexton performed a career-best 9.925 on the balance beam, capturing her first individual title of the 2011 season.

“Kylee didn’t have her very best meet either, but for her to do that well on a night that wasn’t her best shows how much of an athlete she is,” said Plocki. “She’s been having a great season. Jordan did one of her best bar routines and she definitely showed up on the beam.”

Sophomore Natalie Beilstein also contributed to the Wolverines' comeback attempt by scoring a 9.900 on the vault and a 9.800 on the floor.

“It’s disappointing,” Botterman said. “If we didn’t have to count the falls, we definitely should have pulled out the win. It’s nice because we started off on bars – off on a bad note – and we knew that we could still have the potential to stay in it with them.”

Michigan, who faced Iowa inside of its field house due to renovations to the Carver-Hawkeye Arena, just could not hold onto the positives it’d been showing throughout practice last week.

“We beat Iowa first meet, they beat us now,” Botterman said. “Let them have a win because when Big Tens roll around then we’ll be back ready to beat them again.”

The Wolverines will look to clean up their act and refocus as they prepare to host a non-conference quad meet at Crisler Arena this Saturday against Maryland, Kent State and Illinois-Chicago.