The Penn State men's gymnastics team's season so far can easily be described by three S's: sloppy, struggle and Sandy.

The first two S's are not words that a team wants to hear about its last performance, especially after a win.

But those were two words used to describe last week's showing by the No. 5 Nittany Lions (2-0) at home against Temple by their coach and team captain.

"It was just sloppy," Penn State men's gymnastics coach Randy Jepson said after the meet. "Our performances were not quite as sharp as we would have hoped."

The team hopes to fix its problems in a meet against No. 6 Michigan at 7 tomorrow night in Ann Arbor, Mich.

"I'll say that the meet was just a struggle," senior Chad Buczek said after the Temple meet. "Everyone's trying to get used to new stuff and things we've never done before which is new to our routines."

Sitting next to Buczek and hearing his captain's assessment of the team's performance, junior Matt Cohen immediately agreed.

"You bet it was a struggle," Cohen said.

The Lions have been preparing all week for the trip to Ann Arbor to make sure that "sloppy" and "struggle" are not in anyone's vocabulary.

The team returned to the men's gymnastics facility in the White Building with a goal of getting ready for tougher competition in the Wolverines.

Jepson has said all year that the first few meets of the year were going to be a struggle due to injuries and youth, but he wants his team to learn from these experiences for the meets later on in the season.

The Lions have been fortunate enough through the early struggles of a young season to nab two straight wins.

The third S, though, is a huge positive, and freshman Casey Sandy has starred in his first two meets of his young career.

As the team enters Big Ten competition, Jepson has said repeatedly that Sandy has really stood out thus far.

"Casey Sandy has just been great," Jepson said after the last meet. "He's just so good."

Sandy won the all-around competition two weeks in a row and did it with ease, winning by an average of 3.500 points a meet in the Lions' last two wins.

He leads the strong freshman class, which also includes Shaun Antonio and John Maurer. Antonio is coming off a weekend where he finished in second behind Sandy in the parallel bars.

"We're a pretty good team right now," Jepson said after he spoke about his team's struggles. "We just need some guys to step up in some spots."

This Lions squad, though, hopes to erase the first two S's from their season and simply add the only letter that counts to them -- W, as in "win."