The road restarts here.

No. 2 Oregon (2-1) is looking for a bounceback against the No. 9 Gannon University Golden Knights (3-1) on Friday night. The Ducks’ first loss of the season, last week to No. 1 Baylor University, is nowhere near season ending. What it was, though, was a litmus test that proved something: Oregon’s fastball isn’t enough yet. 

“I think now that we have a really strong foundation,” Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara said midweek about her revamped 6-element acro heat. “They’re just going to keep getting better and better.”

Better was what the Ducks were against Baylor. Better and better is what they’re looking for this weekend. 

That’s where its difficult schedule comes in. There’s not an unranked meet left on the Ducks’ schedule — there hasn’t been since they flew back from Springfield, Missouri in early February. Even if they’re good enough on paper to run the table all the way to Baylor’s trip to Eugene in April, they’ll be pushed the whole way. A loss could mean a No. 3 or 4 seed in the NCATA Championships, and that would change their postseason picture, and that means the road to holding onto the No. 2 seed begins again against Gannon.

Oregon should expect to be pushed all the way to that next 1-vs-2 meet, and it starts with the giant-killing Golden Knights.

There’s some history here

Despite the gap in scoring this season, it’s important to remember that these have been two of the top programs in the NCATA over the last half-decade. Gannon came into Eugene and beat the Ducks in 2022 in a meet where both teams went over 271 points. The Golden Knights, though, are reworking their program after former assistant coach Abby Womeldorph replaced four-year head coach Brandy Duren before the 2026 season.

Oregon hired a new coach before the 2026 season, too — Ashley Fallgren, a former Gannon athlete, is reuniting with her old program on Friday. Womeldorph is one of Fallgren’s old teammates, and a good friend.

“​​I’m excited because she’s one of my best friends, so, coming from athletes together to now we’re both coaching across the mat, it’s really fun,” Fallgren said. “It’s something I didn’t know if we’d ever do, so it feels pretty legit, like, ‘Wow. We’re up here. We’re doing it.”

There’s history between these two teams, even if Gannon hasn’t reached the Ducks’ level yet this season. There’s something to be said for experience in big moments, and both these coaching staffs have it.

Some updates: Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara said on Thursday that top Selah Bell, who had been limited with a knee injury and was swapped out of some heats earlier this season, returned to tumbling this week. The Ducks did raise their start value slightly against Baylor, where they increased their synchronized toss value and adjusted tumbling to hit a 107.38 total, up 0.09 from their win over No. 3 Quinnipiac University.  

Six-element acro tracker

Oregon head coach Taylor Susnara called the six-element acro heat the Ducks’ “nemesis.” Before their trip to Baylor last week, her team had turned in a pair of sub-8.000-point scores. In Waco, Texas, though, they scored 9.000.

“I was thrilled,” Susnara said.

Her diagnosis was one of inconsistency. She inserted sophomore top Maya Khauv — a first-time starter — against Quinnipiac on Feb. 21. Sophomore base Aubrey Edge, another second-year athlete without on-the-mat experience as a freshman, also joined the heat.

“Once we got really consistent with our two man full-ups, which I’ve been in the team event this whole time, and putting Maya and Aubrey in, that solidified the change for me,” Susnara said.

Last year, the heat averaged 9.1225 points through 10 meets, but scored as high as 9.600 and often hovered around the 9.300 mark (it’s held back by a pair of 8.500 or lower scores). “Better and better” will approach those marks, even though synchronized heats are often some of teams’ lowest-scoring heats due to the added deduction potential. 

How much of a challenge does Gannon pose?

I’ll include a disclaimer here: comparing scores between independent groups of judges in this sport is difficult and doesn’t always reflect the level of talent.

But the Golden Knights haven’t scored above 258.305 this season, and the Ducks haven’t gone under the 267.325 mark. Their common opponent, Quinnipiac, beat Gannon by 18.715 points. Oregon’s win over the Bobcats, in which QU scored just 1.285 points less than it did against Gannon, was by more than five points.

Here’s what all those numbers mean: so far this season, Gannon hasn’t been on Oregon’s level. Not only will its tumbling even likely not have the start values to match the Ducks, it’s been limited in what they can execute even from lower-difficulty skills. 

In the Golden Knights’ highest-scoring meet of their season, a tri-meet against Buffalo University and Trine University, they scored 8.400 from a 9.500 synchronized toss and 8.900 from a 9.500 open toss. They took a tenth of difficulty off their seven-element sequence, but scored 8.650 there. Those haven’t been season-long issues, though their toss event in the Quinnipiac meet also scored more than a point under the start value, but they’re openings that the Ducks often walk through with ease. None of those are likely to put Gannon in a good position to take advantage of events where the Ducks have been vulnerable this season.

Here’s the reality: Oregon’s path to a top-2 seed will likely require a sprint through the middle of their schedule. It’s probably an expanded version of what their postseason will look like, too, and Baylor could lie at the end of both. The priorities remain the same, with a solidified six-element acro and hitting team event top of the list.

A win is the first checked box on this new list for the Ducks over a team that hasn’t always been easy to take down.

Oregon faces Gannon on March 5 at 6 p.m PT., at Matthew Knight Arena.