A previous version of this story erroneously reported that Juda was in the hospital on Saturday morning. This story was updated Feb. 6 to correct that Juda was in the hospital Friday.
Graduate gymnast Paul Juda had a very bad week.
Why did Juda have a bad week? Well, he got the flu, got in a car crash and was in the emergency room at 3:30 A.M. on Friday morning with a kidney stone. And while he battled through and performed exceptionally, the up and down performance from the No. 4 Michigan men’s gymnastics team didn’t improve his week.
Despite being the favorites entering Saturday’s meet, the Wolverines’ (7-1 overall, 0-1 Big Ten) season-long inconsistencies and underwhelming performances led to a 413.800 to 410.350 loss versus No. 5 Illinois (6-1, 2-0).
“We didn’t perform like a national championship team,” Juda said. “And a quote I’ve been saying to the guys this week is that ‘champions behave like champions before they were ever champions.’ And today we didn’t act like that. We didn’t perform like that.”
The meet began poorly for Michigan. Several large hops on landings chipped away at the Wolverines’ cushion of points, and two falls from graduate Casey Cummings left him at the bottom of the rankings by eight-tenths of a point with his 11.550.
While the Wolverines owned second and third place on the leaderboard after stellar performances from sophomore Landon Blixt and Juda, they also owned the bottom two positions. Floor hasn’t been Michigan’s strong suit, but a lackadaisical performance dug the Wolverines into an early hole that they spent the rest of the meet trying to escape.
The pommel horse was not expected to go much better for Michigan, down 2.35 points entering what is traditionally Illinois’ strongest event. Sophomore Zach Granados and Blixt, along with sophomore Fred Richard, had underwhelming performances. Fortunately for the Wolverines, freshman Kevin Chow and Juda flew through their routines, earning respective season highs of 13.55 and 14.25 to keep the points gap relatively close at 2.60.
Michigan regained momentum on the still rings, a strength for it this season. Despite some wobbles on landings, the Wolverines turned in strong performances, cutting the Illini lead to just 1.65 points. Juda earned another season high of 13.65.
That momentum didn’t last long, though, as Michigan fell apart on the vault. Juda placed first, continuing his dominant run, but Michigan placed no one else in the top five before Richard in sixth. The Wolverines’ biggest issues were on display on the apparatus with huge steps on landings, sloppy dismounts, and poor overall execution.
Meanwhile, the Illini broke their program’s vault record with a dominant performance. And with that, the gap widened to 3.05 points.
“It’d be wrong to shout out our (vault) performance,” Juda said. “We’re more capable in vault and we all know that.”
Entering into the final two rotations, Michigan hoped to recreate its comeback from the Windy City Invitational on the parallel bars and the high bar. After some early season struggles, senior Evgeny Siminiuc put together his strongest performance of the season and earned a season-best 14.30. Solid performances from the rest of the team eventually cut Illinois’ lead to just 0.75 points.
“We just have dawgs on the event,” Juda said. “They worked so darn hard on p-bars. … our lineup is incredible.”
But that was the closest the Wolverines came. Errors from Juda and senior Javier Alfonso widened the gap to 1.75 points. And though Michigan fought valiantly on the high bar, falls from Juda and junior Rithik Puri, as well as more of the same errors that plagued the Wolverines all night, dug them into an even deeper hole, and they lost by 3.45 points — the widest margin of the night.
“I was fighting like crazy to stay on the bar,” Juda said. “That’s sometimes the risk that you run when you go for perfection like I was. Definitely tried to stay on the bar, didn’t voluntarily hop off, and really upset that I couldn’t finish it out like that.”
The Wolverines ultimately failed to fix their mistakes from the previous week and capitalize on any momentum they gained throughout the meet. They had a chance to regain momentum on still rings, but immediately faltered on the vault. They could have tied it on the parallel bars, but came up just short as errors plagued the event.
“I think too often today that we had a mistake, and we had somebody that was able to patch up the bleeding really well,” Juda said. “But what we need to do now is make sure that once that mistake is nullified by the next great routine that the rest of the guys continue to use that momentum and are really fired up for the rest of their team.”
Despite a standout performance from Juda, who battled through and found a way to put points on the board, Michigan struggled. And as the Wolverines succumbed to their mistakes, Juda’s no good very bad week found a way to get a little bit worse.