WACO, Texas -- Azusa Pacific's visit to defending NCATA national champion Baylor University presented the last matchup between unbeaten teams in 2018, and the Cougars held their own until the host Bears pulled away with a dominant performance in the team event to wrap up a victory over the Cougars by a 7.2-point margin.
Baylor improved to 6-0 on the season after scoring its season-high (286.035), while Azusa Pacific was well below its season-high with a tally of 278.825 points as it dropped to 4-1 overall.
Azusa Pacific registered at least two season-highs in all five events leading up to the team event, and the Cougars slashed a 1.3-point halftime deficit to just four-tenths of a point with scores of 9.75 in all three heats of the toss event. From there, Baylor gained most of its separation in group tumbling, and the Bears edged Azusa Pacific in each of the three solo tumbling heats to build up 2.65 points of separation heading into the team event.
What It Means: Azusa Pacific elevated its performance to a season-best in several events against the defending national champion, but the Cougars were well short of their overall best performance in Saturday's battle with Baylor. A victory in its regular-season finale against Converse on April 5 would tie the best regular-season win total (5) for Azusa Pacific in its eight-year program history. In 2014, the Cougars went 5-2 in the regular season and went on to post the program's best national finish (runner-up).
Top Performances: The Cougars produced 14 heats scored at 9.70 or better, with six of them scoring 9.90 or higher. That included the season's first perfect-10, which came in the inversion pyramid. Azusa Pacific won two out of three heats in the pyramid event and all three heats of the toss event to win both of those events by a combined margin of 1.2 points.
Seniors Ashleigh Pitts and Heather Hovander each posted season-highs in individual tumbling, with Pitts scoring 9.90 in the aerial pass while Hovander collected a score of 9.875 in the six-element pass. Hovander also contributed to the six-element heat of the acro event which scored a season-best 9.95 with Hovander, Kimberly Loidolt, Hannah Steffen, Kara Ingersoll, and Jolynn Stahl.
The other season-high scores came in the following events: compulsory pyramid (9.90), compulsory toss (9.95), five-element acro (9.80), seven-element acro (9.70), synchronized pyramid (9.90), 450 salto toss (9.75), and synchronized toss (9.75).
What's Next: All that remains in the regular season is Azusa Pacific's matchup at home against a first-year NCATA program from Converse College on Thursday, April 5, at 7:00 p.m. Qualifiers and seedings will be announced on April 12 for the 2018 NCATA National Championships, which take place April 26-28 at Gannon University in Erie, Pa.
