The Penn State women's gymnastics team is on the road for the second consecutive week. And the teams it will compete against will not make being away from home any easier.

For the second time this season, the Penn State women's gymnastics team will face Florida. The Lions will also face No. 7 Stanford and Illinois-Chicago in the quadrangular meet scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday in Gainesville, Florida.

Penn State and the No. 14 Gators first met in the Lions first meet of the season at the Super Six Challenge where Florida finished fourth and Penn State finished sixth. But since then, both teams have improved, with Florida's highest score of 195.425 coming Feb. 1 against Michigan.

"Both teams were in similar situations. We were just coming out of the blocks," assistant Penn State coach Jessica Bastardi said about Penn State and Florida competing in the Super Six Challenge. "We had some people who had no experience and now have had several meets to compete in, in several different situations."

Florida coach Judi Markell says her team has changed a bit since Penn State saw it last as well, including some additions and changes to the lineup now that certain athletes are off the injured list.

Penn State has also had athletes return to its lineup, including Dana Cuomo and Dina Sulyma who will look to contribute for the Lions. In Penn State's last two meets Sulyma has competed on the floor exercise scoring over a 9.800 each time.

While Penn State is coming off a win last weekend, both Florida and Stanford are coming off losses against Oklahoma and UCLA, respectively.

"It was really motivating," Markell said. "It was a hard loss to swallow. We knew we could've beaten the No. 3 team at home. We just weren't mentally tough enough."

But coach Markell said even with just a few more days of practice under the team's belt, she can already see a different attitude in her team.

And the Gators will need that new attitude to take on their top competition this weekend.

Stanford will try and continue to do what it has done all year that has gotten it ranked in the top 25 in every exercise. Stanford is currently ranked 19th on floor exercise, 13th on beam, 6th on bars and 8th on vault. Florida is also ranked in the top 25 in each event, however they rank ahead of Stanford only on the floor where they are 11th.

Penn State is also ranked in the top 25 in three of four events including the beam (15th), bars (24th) and floor (23rd).

The performance of Penn State's core of junior returners has helped elevate the Lions to that status. Katie Rowland is currently ranked eighth in the country in the all-around, as well as 18th on floor and 12th on vault.

And this weekend, the Lions will try and capitalize on that strength even more in the away meet situation they find themselves in.

"It's an opportunity to stack ourselves up against some of the best teams in the country," Bastardi said. "We are going out and performing in the situation Florida can provide with the atmosphere and all the fans. It's good for them (the team) to get into that type of experience like we will do more and more of towards the end of the year. It's not so much pressure, but excitement and a challenge. We're looking forward to an opportunity to prove ourselves in those situations."