“We had more fans than normal, and that helped get our adrenaline up and made us compete well,” sophomore Brittany Holmes said.

Junior Ashley Noll also said that having a bigger crowd brought more energy, and more cheering and enthusiasm, which reflected in the team’s performance.

Although the team came out with its first win and performed in front of a large crowd, head coach Kathie Klages said that still did not bring out her gymnasts’ full potential.

“Feels nice to get the win and it’s nice to see them fight back,” Klages said. “The team is (so much) better than what they show.”

Holmes said she is happy with the win but acknowledged the team will have to be better and show that to the audience.

“(The win) feels great because we’ve been working hard this week,” she said. “We’re not entirely happy, but definitely excited.”

The Spartans didn’t have good vault and bars rotations against the Hawkeyes — Cartwright fell on bars and sophomore Kate Filosi on vault.

They did OK on floor, but did not perform as well as they can, Klages said.

“They’ve been plugging away at the gym, and now we need to work on transferring that to the competition floor,” she said. “The mock meet was a really good thing at practice, and we have to make practice more like competition.”

Practicing every day as if they are competing shot up the team’s confidence, Noll said, and that is starting to show at actual meets.

“We’ve been practicing a lot better and bringing that confidence to the competition floor, and coming off with the win will motivate us to work even harder,” Noll said.

Now that they won, Holmes said they can see the “little mistakes” they made, work on them and understand they know they can fix them.

Iowa head coach Larissa Libby said she was “very annoyed” after the meet, because her team started out well and she has taught them to close out matches.

“When it stays in the gym and not on the competition floor it’s a struggle,” Libby said. “In order to be the best, you got to go beyond that; we can’t afford the injury, no team can.”

Iowa freshman Amanda Kowalski fell back after a tumbling pass on floor and injured herself.

She did not compete at the last event.

Her teammates were concerned for her, but remained energetic for each of the other girls competing.

“The team is the most important thing. We teach them that no person is bigger than the whole entity, we are each other,” Libby said. “It sucks to lose, but if we lost, I’m glad it was to MSU.”

MSU previously had lost to Penn State and Michigan in recent weeks. The loss to the Wolverines came as a particularly large blow to the team, who couldn’t recover from a large deficit.

The Spartans’ next meet will be against Minnesota at 6 p.m. on Saturday in Minneapolis, Minn.