The first home meet of the season can cause jitters in any team.

Being in front of a home crowd, wanting to perform well in front of them and for yourself, and still trying to work out the kinks from the preseason can all cause nervousness for any athlete.

That was the case for the No. 18 Penn State women's gymnastics team Saturday night at Rec Hall.

The kinks proved to be too much for the Lions who lost the meet against Denver, 193.250-192.750, in front of the 3,031 in attendance.

"We need to put certain people in critical situations where they're really feeling the pressure," Penn State coach Steve Shephard said.

"We try to simulate a meet situation as much as possible (in practice) because I think that the home crowd, the pressure of being here and wanting to do a good job kind of got to some of them with mental mistakes.

"So we are going to increase our consistency in practice also, because if you are not consistent in practice, it's pretty hard to be consistent in a meet."

The Lions counted falls on both bars and balance beam causing them to finish behind Denver in both rotations.

Denver scored a 48.250 on bars to the Lions 48.175 and a 47.700 on beam to the Lions 47.675.

The Lions also finished behind Denver in both the floor exercise and the vault with scores of 48.850 to 48.525 and 48.450 to 48.375, respectively.

Although the Lions came up short overall, Penn State had the top three all-arounders in the competition.

Junior Katie McAvoy's 39.150 was enough to take home the gold with scores of 9.800 (vault), 9.825 (bars), 9.750 (beam), and 9.775 (floor).

McAvoy also took home the Ann Carr Award given to the gymnast who performs the most inspirational performance of the night.

Juniors Katie Rowland and Leslie Bair finished second and third behind McAvoy with scores of 38.850 and 38.675 respectively.

"I felt confident because I've been hitting my bar routines pretty well all week," Bair said about her 9.775 performance.

"I knew I could hit and I knew we needed a hit. I just felt confident going into it."

But Bair still cites confidence as one area the team needs to work on overall.

"We all can hit our routines in practice and there is no reason why we shouldn't be hitting it here," Bair said.

"It's a lot mental and we need to put more pressure on ourselves in the gym so we can go out there and compete like we practice."

The Lions will be back in the gym all this week trying to rid themselves of the jitters for their third meet of the season away against Pittsburgh on Saturday.

Penn State's first meet of the season was at the SEC Challenge on Jan. 11 where they finished sixth.

The Lions finished behind No. 1 Georgia, No. 2 UCLA, No. 6 Alabama, No. 11 Florida and No. 15 Louisiana State.

"They work so hard to be able to perform in front of a crowd," Shephard said.

"It was nice to have everybody come out and support the team. I wish we would have performed a little bit better tonight but it's early in the year still. We have some work to do."