Head Coach Mark Williams
On the meet:
We're thrilled. Stanford had a great crowd. They took us down to the very last event, made us have to earn it and really take our performance to another level.
On senior co-captains Jonathan Horton and Taqiy Abdullah-Simmons:
I can't be more proud of the way they finished their careers tonight. We just had kind of a special feeling this week. It's going to be hard to say goodbye to these guys because we've been through a lot. I really appreciate them and I'm very thankful for the effort from my team.
On having finishing the meet with rings routines by Horton and Taqiy Abdullah-Simmons:
I knew that those two guys were going to give us a chance. It's hard to match up the vault scores with the rings scores and, going in, we left ourselves open a little bit because of our low pommel horse score. But we still had an opportunity and I knew that Jon was going to do a more difficult routine tonight which might give is a little bump. We had some other guys who actually had better performances, but in the end these two guys made the difference.
I always hope just to have great performances. I probably still would have been happy with this team, win or lose. We've worked very hard to be national champions, but sometimes it's just about going out there and having fun and we were having a great time.
On being considered the underdogs:
I told the pre-meet television interview that this time Stanford's the better team. They beat us earlier in the season. They're going to be at home, they're going to be excited, they're going to have guys that are healed up a little bit from the conference meet. But we gave them a little bit to think about after beating them at the conference meet and we just want to make a run at it and make it interesting and hang with them and hopefully the best team in the end will finish things out and deserve the victory.
I honestly felt like they had more depth than we did. But they didn't have Taqiy and Jon either. So I knew that was a bonus for us.
On Abdullah-Simmons' performance:
To be fair, Taqiy's really struggled with a lot of injuries this year. He had double knee surgery over the summer, dislocated a finger two weeks ago, he had a shoulder problem. We were trying to band-aid and tape him together to get him through one more for us.
It was a little bit a roll of the dice to have him go out there, but he's been such a champion in the past I just felt like he's done it before and he certainly deserved the opportunity to be out there. In the end his rings score was the difference.
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Senior Co-Captain Jonathan Horton
On the meet:
It was an incredible competition. I couldn't have scripted it any better. Stanford was an unbelievable team tonight. They definitely put their hearts out there and so did we. We're thankful we had a great performance and we ended up on top.
On his performance:
I'm very proud of my team. A lot of times I tend to put pressure on myself to come through and I had some mistakes tonight, but my team was incredible tonight. They backed us up in everything. A lot of guys came through tonight. It was an incredible performance. I couldn't have asked for anything better.
On closing out the competition on rings:
I can honestly say as much fun as rings was, going into that event, I think Taqiy felt the same, you build up a ton of anger. It's one of those events where if you don't psyche yourself out to the point to where you're unbelievably angry because you want it so bad, you're not going to be strong enough. I think that's what he and I did. We did, I felt like, some of the best ring routines we've ever done.
As soon as you hop up on those rings and you have that fury in your eyes and you're just ready to go and you want it bad, it happens a lot easier. That adrenaline's pumping and I think every one of the guys on our team, I did not hear them stop yelling for any routine, which makes it even easier to get up there and get yourself pumped. That was the first ring routine I think I've ever done where at the end I wasn't tired at all because I had so much adrenaline going.
It was just so much fun to be up there in that handstand before my dismount just thinking, `I'm going to stick this. I'm going to give our team a shot.' I know Taqiy was thinking the same thing. We all had to do our jobs. If any of us made a mistake, we wouldn't have won. I just have to say again that I'm so thankful for the team that I have. Everybody was clutch tonight and came through when we needed them.
On Abdullah-Simmons' leadership:
Taqiy is probably, out of all the athletes that I know, the best at letting a routine go if it was bad. I definitely envy that ability that he has.
I had to work really hard tonight to not get super frustrated after my high bar routine because I've been in a little bit of a high bar drought and when I missed that release I was furious. When I walked back and I looked at Taqiy and I saw that he wasn't upset and I thought `Okay. This is a team competition.' I had to figure out what he does.
He's incredible at letting it go right away and getting right back into it. That's what makes him an incredible leader. He just keeps pushing everyone.
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Senior Co-Captain Taqiy Abdullah-Simmons
On the meet:
Tonight was a tremendous competition. It was a great competition for a lot of teams. Stanford did a tremendous job. They are classy gymnasts and it was great to have them out there. Kudos go to Illinois, Penn State and every other team that was there tonight.
I'm just extremely excited about this because I wasn't on tonight at all. But that's the whole point - it's a team competition and we're a team. That's what we stressed the whole year. There's not one individual that's greater than the team.
This was the greatest team effort I've ever seen and the best team I've been a part of since I've been here. That was amazing and it's not just great to go out like that, but it was a great competition and great to be a part of.
On ending the competition on rings:
Ending on rings you couldn't pick a more solid event and an event that you feel more comfortable on. We knew going into the last event that we had a two-and-a-half point lead ... We just went out there and performed. We had fun. That was the whole theme of this week - to embrace it and enjoy every moment with this team because this team will never be back on the floor again. We just loved every moment of it. It was just a great competition. I can't say that enough.
On being the underdogs:
Right when we walked into the competition, I had never really thought of us as underdogs. Then Jon said `It's so odd, but don't you like being the underdog?' I thought, `You know what? That's awesome.'
We normally have that target on our back, but this year, it was there of course, but Stanford had that on their back. They were ranked No. 1. We had nothing to lose. No team out there really has anything to lose. You go out there and every team gives their all. We just went out there and performed and it was great to be out there and be in the position of fighting for every tenth and putting everything out there.
On overcoming a bad routine:
One event, you mess up, move on. You can't dwell on anything in a competition. It's a team competition. If this was individual I'd think `Oh, I have absolutely no chance.' But it's a team competition and you know that your team constantly has your back at every moment and in every mistake. It makes it that much easier to stay calm and relaxed.
There was never a point where I started to dwell on any routine I missed previously in the competition because I know there's the next one and the next one. It so happened that on the last one I got my head in it, not like it wasn't before, but that was when it matter the most and I came through, thank God.
