Last year at the NCAA Championships, the Penn State men's gymnastics team captured its 10th national championship with a nearly perfect performance on the pommel horse.

Brandon Stefaniak won his second national gold on the apparatus last April, a fitting climax after pacing the Nittany Lions' effort in the event for four years.

Saturday night, without the graduated Stefaniak, No. 4 Penn State lost the opening meet of the 2001 campaign at Massachusetts because of inconsistencies on, you guessed it, the pommel horse.

The 205.00-202.15 win was the No. 11 Minutemen's first over the Nittany Lions. They had lost 21 meets to Penn State over a span of 36 years, including three last season.

Despite a first-place finish at the UMass Open in December, little was known about this year's inexperienced Minutemen squad, which has just one senior. Eleven of the 20 gymnasts are sophomores or freshmen.

Saturday night they showed not only that they have tremendous talent, but that they would not be intimidated by the reigning national champions.

For the Nittany Lions, Jose Palacios (50.400) finished first overall while Tobias Ekman placed second with a score of 49.850. Kevin Donohue won both the floor exercise (9.150) and the high bars (8.700).

Kevin Tan, who joined the team this semester from California, won the rings in his collegiate debut with an 8.850 score. Ekman won the vault (9.100), and Palacios was first on the parallel bars (8.850). The Nittany Lions claimed the top spot in six of seven events.

But their top finisher on the pommel horse was Josh Malecki, who ended up seventh. And that literally made all the difference. Scoring only 30.700 points on the horse lost the meet for the Lions.

"The pommel horse hurt," coach Randy Jepson said. "The guys made a lot of uncharacteristic errors. They have to go out and do it."

Jepson believes the Lions can pick up at least five points on the pommel horse but can also improve in the other events.

"We expected to come out a little shaky, with the gym not being done and all," he said. "We generally have more intersquad meets before the season, so we treated this as a tune-up. Our problems will take care of themselves."

Clearly, Penn State has the firepower to make a strong defense of their national title. They return 11 gymnasts from last year, including seven seniors and four All-Americans.

They showed some rust and a slight weakness in the pommel horse against the Minutemen, which was not entirely unexpected. The renovations to the White Building, where the team trains, were not completed until late November. The new state of the art equipment will give the men an advantage in the long run, but right now they are not where they should be when it comes to training

"The good thing is that we get to go out and do it again next week," Jepson said. "We're going to keep improving."