It’s not March Madness, but Saturday’s NCAA Regional Championship in Happy Valley, Penn., is a gymnastics version of it.

Iowa State will compete with five other teams for a chance to advance to the National Championships. This is the 12th consecutive regional appearance for Iowa State and the 13th in school history.

“There’s a lot of good teams, and I like it,” said coach Jay Ronayne. “Everybody we’re going up against can do it, but can they all do it on the same night – who knows? We know we can do it.”

The Cyclones sneaked into the NCAA Regional Championship because of their improbable second-place finish at the Big 12 Championships. The last-seeded Cyclones, came up 0.1 behind champion Oklahoma.

“We’re still on a high – that was the highlight of the season so far, and it was a great feeling to show people what we can do,” said junior Jennifer Salfen.

The Cyclones set a season-high score of 195.775 at the Big 12 Championships, and junior Jasmine Thompson had a season-high score of 39.275 in the all-around competition to lead the Cyclones.

“Coming off that big meet, it just gives us more confidence to go in and know that we can hit 24 for 24 and make it to nationals,” Thompson said.

If Iowa State wants to advance to the NCAA Championship meet, then it will need to shock everyone as the last seed again.

“Our approach was, ‘absolutely nobody is going to be looking at us because we’re the fourth seed.’ That’s the same way we’re going into the regional championship being the sixth seed,” Ronayne said. “Who’s going to care about us? Nobody.”

The top 36 teams in the nation qualify for regionals, with six teams being placed in each of six different regions. The Cyclones’ region includes No. 1 Georgia, along with No. 12 Auburn, No. 13 Denver, No. 23 Penn State and Brigham Young University.

The top two teams from each region advance to the National Championships in Athens, Ga.

Despite their imposing opponents, Iowa State is only worrying about its own routines. In an intense week of practice, the Cyclones are focusing on improving their landings – where critical fractions of points can be won or lost.

“We only pay attention to ourselves. We don’t care what another team does, and that’s the approach we’ve had the last part of the season,” Ronayne said. “That’s what it comes down to in a championship, because in a sport that has no defense, why would it matter what another team is doing?”