The Penn State women's gymnastics team's trip to Ohio State didn't go as planned this weekend.

Heading into Columbus with a 1-0 Big Ten record, Penn State women's gymnastics coach Steve Shephard believed that his team was the favorite in Saturday night's meet.

It turned out that not even a score of 195.950 was good enough to pull out the victory.

The Nittany Lions tied the Buckeyes with a score of 195.950 on Saturday night, marking the first tie of the season for Penn State.

The result brought its season record to 6-3-1.

One bright spot from the meet was the Lions' uneven bars performance. So far this season, the Lions have been plagued by poor performances on the bars.

For the first time all season, the Lions scored above 48.000 points on the bars, registering a season high 48.875.

The Lions were led on the bars by sophomore Michelle Ilg, whose score of 9.900 paced the Lions on the event.

Cecile Allen also contributed to the bars score with a solid 9.800 performance.

"I think our bars performance was real solid," Shephard said.

"It was our best score of the year, and I'm really happy at the progress we've made."

The two best events for the Lions so far this season have been the floor exercise and the balance beam.

On Saturday night, the Lions' best performance came on the vault, adding to the list of anomalies from the evening's festivities.

The team scored a season high 49.250 on the vault, capped off by Lisa Clark's event high 9.900.

Out of the top-10 vault finishers, six of them were Nittany Lions, marking a solid opening event of the meet for Penn State.

"It was good to see us place well in the vault," Shephard said. "We've been practicing hard on that recently, and it was nice to see the work pay off."

The balance beam and the floor exercise continued to be staples of a solid Penn State routine. The team earned balance beam and floor exercise scores of 48.725 and 49.100, respectively.

Leading the way for Penn State was Kate Stopper, who earned a team-high 9.875 on both events. Tying her score on the floor exercise was Meredith Hoover.

"I'm very happy with how I did," Stopper said. "We knew Ohio State was going to be tough. We all worked hard this week to perfect our routines, and I think our score reflects that."

After the meet, Shephard was obviously happy about his team's finish.

"I think we had a solid performance," Shephard said.

"People may not think so because we earned a tie, but routine-wise and score-wise, it was one of our best meets of the season. We'll work hard this week to try and keep that performance level pretty high."

Maybe a tie isn't so bad after all.