I'm certain the mistakes were mental and that there were several contributing factors. One, as you so deftly point out, is the fact that this was a meet that, with all due respect to UK, should have been a "gimme." Alabama and UGA just don't lose to the UK's and AU's of the gymnastics world.
Also, as you point out, it was sandwiched in between the two dual meets between UA and UGA. Both of these factors could easily have contributed to the mental letdown. Add to those the fact that it was senior night which provided an additional distraction and likely added its own share of jitters.
Throw in the bad weather late that afternoon that contributed to the smallest crowd to show up at Coleman for a UA-UGA meet in years and you have the makings for a big letdown.
Like you, I am sure that Coach Patterson will have the ladies ready to take it to the dawgs. Coming off a disappointing performance like last week, she probably won't even have to do much in the way of motivation. The desire to bounce back and put that showing out of their minds combined with the fact that we're going into the Dawg House will be motivation enough.
Also, if Sarah has a videotape of Suzanne Yoculan's show where she reviewed the UA-UGA meet, showing that to the team will be all the motivation anyone would need. Yoculan repeatedly criticized the scores that the judges "gave" Alabama's routines and then criticized UGA's low scores. She spoke of not having the home crowd there to influence the judges scores on the floor exercise like we did.
If Yoculan wasn't enough, at the end of the show, 2 or 3 of their gymnasts were interviewed while still on the floor of Coleman as the fans headed for the exits. In these interviews these GymDawgs each criticized the judges as having inflated our scores and low-balled their scores. Sure, it was a UGA show and you expect some bias; however, those are things that you just don't say on camera!
