The ISU gymnastics team is No. 13 nationally, but will still have a battle on its hands at this weekend’s Big 12 Championships in Columbia, Mo.

The event begins at 7 p.m. Saturday in the Hearnes Center at the University of Missouri.

No. 2 Nebraska and sixth-ranked Oklahoma will compete. And No. 25 Missouri is coming off their first winning season since winning the Big 8 Championships in 1996.

But ISU head coach K.J. Kindler said rankings and seedings can fluctuate at this meet.

“Last year was a very similar situation,” she said. “Oklahoma actually went in with the No. 1 seed and as the favorite. We went in seeded third and ended up second and Nebraska won the meet.”

Nebraska has won the Big 12 Championships each season except for the 2000 season — when Iowa State took the title — since the first Big 12 Championship meet in 1997.

During the regular season, the Cyclones (6-8, 1-4) lost to Nebraska (17-1, 5-0) twice, Oklahoma (13-7, 2-2) once and split with Missouri (10-7, 1-3).

The rest of the schools in the Big 12 Conference do not field women’s gymnastics teams.

Kindler said the team’s performance on the uneven bars will be a big factor in the outcome of the meet. The team has been working really hard on hitting bars six-for-six — meaning no falls or big stumbles on a landing. They haven’t done yet this year in a meet or in practice until Tuesday, Kindler said.

“They knew they couldn’t leave the gym this week until they hit six-for-six,” she said. “Because obviously, if you’re not doing it in practice, how are you going to do it in the meet? So we’ve done it once in practice and we are hoping to do it in practice again, then we’ll walk into the meet with a little more confidence on that event.”

The Cyclones will begin on bars Saturday, and Kindler said it’s important to start off on the right foot.

“I think that is going to set the tone for the whole meet because it is our event that has been less consistent this year,” she said. “I think definitely that a strong performance there will indicate what is going to happen for the rest of the evening.”

Kindler said even though her squad has been inconsistent on the bars, the women are making up for it with their performances in the other events.

“Beam has been phenomenal. Vault was the best they’ve done all year at the last meet,” she said.

“So I think they are going in with high confidence. I think it will be good to go to vault last because it is one of our stronger events as has floor. So we’ll go floor [third] and vault last.”

The Cyclones notched their second-highest score of the season last Sunday against Nebraska, but it wasn’t enough as they fell to the Cornhuskers 197.050-198.300. Freshman Erin Dethloff took third in the all-around competition with a score of 39.50. Dethloff has carried the Cyclones this season and has earned Big 12 Gymnast of the Week honors twice this season.

Iowa State isn’t the only team that is coming off a loss, though. Oklahoma had its seven-match win streak broken by No. 8 Stanford, while Missouri dropped a contest to Brigham Young University.

Nebraska, which hasn’t been beaten since finishing second in the Super Six Challenge on Jan. 11, is ranked in the top five in every apparatus and is considered this year’s favorite. The Cornhuskers rank second on the uneven bars and vault and fourth on the floor exercise and the balance beam.

They are led in the all-around by junior Richelle Simpson and senior A.J. Lamb who are ranked second and eighth in the nation, respectively.

Even with a strong mindset, and the confidence that they can perform well in the Big 12 meet, there is still a case of the jitters for some of the underclassmen who will be competing in their first Big 12 Championship meet.

“I’m kind of nervous, because I want to go in thinking it is just another meet and just do the same thing,” Dethloff said. “But in the back of my mind there is also [the realization that] this is a big meet. There are going to be a lot of people there and a lot of people watching and cheering us on.”

She is still excited about the opportunity in front of her and the rest of the Cyclones.

“I’m looking forward to it,” Dethloff said. “We’ve been working a lot on perfecting our routines and polishing them up.”

This has been a season that has surpassed many people’s expectations, she said. After losing seven letter winners from last year’s team, the Cyclones have had to rebuild this season, but it hasn’t shown as much as some expected, Kindler said.

“This is a team that was very heavily underrated. People thought that this would be a rebuilding year,” she said. “The fact is that we may have started out a little rough but they really put together good routines. They’ve shown that they can be consistent; they’ve shown that they’re mentally strong and I think we’ve surprised a lot of people.”

With the regional and national competitions coming up, the team is trying not to look too far ahead. Kindler said her team knows what’s at stake this weekend.

“We have every intention of going in there and hitting 24-for-24 and blowing the score through the roof and see what happens from there,” she said. “We can’t control their performances, but we can control ours.”