Going into its first home meet of the season against No. 5 LSU, the second-ranked Gym Dogs bring a few numbers to mind:

Two wins (over Stanford and Florida, two top-10 teams), one loss (a .10-point loss to No. 3 Utah), and five falls, all on beam.

Falls on the balance beam cost the Gym Dogs a victory in Salt Lake City and turned an otherwise comfortable win at Florida into the smallest possible margin for victory.

“I don’t think it’s something that’s worth all this attention and to-do,” sophomore Grace Taylor said. “And I definitely don’t think it helps us to sit around and think about falling when almost all of us are always hitting.”

Tiffany Tolnay and Courtney Kupets fell at Utah. Hillary Mauro at Stanford. Taylor and Courtney McCool did so in Gainesville. Five different gymnasts falling seems like it would be a big problem – head coach Suzanne Yoculan and her gymnasts point to the contrary.

“If it’s the same person over and over again, then maybe it’s a problem, and you need to change the lineup or do something about it, but when it’s a different person every time you have to look at it as a single event,” Yoculan said.

“It’s a good thing that different people get to experience it – it’s good for everybody,” McCool said, whose stuck dismount after her fall against the Gators won the meet.

Beam is one of the more mentally draining events in a meet, and Yoculan attributed that to at least some of the falls. But Tolnay’s fall came on “a skill I haven’t seen her miss in three years,” Yoculan said. Taylor’s fall was attributed to when her foot missed the beam on the dismount.

Missing skills is something new for the Gym Dogs. Kupets’ fall was just the third of her prolific career, Tolnay’s third ever on beam, and Taylor’s first since coming to Athens last season.

Despite all the miscues, the team is confident and ready for its home opener with LSU (5-0, 1-0 SEC), its fourth top-10 opponent in as many meets.

“All we want to do is get a really big score, and I feel it in my bones – I feel a 198,” Taylor said.

“We’re the same great beam routine we were in December, and just because five different people had one fall doesn’t mean we should have a different perspective of how we are and change our level of confidence,” Yoculan said.

“I still feel like we have true champions competing on the balance beam for us, and in the end they’re going to be there.”

PINK OUT!

It’s something one Gym Dog described as “trying to be all cool like the football team.”

But the “Pink Out” of Georgia gymnastics’ first home meet Saturday is much more than that, as it hopes to raise money and awareness for breast cancer.

The Gym Dogs have used one of their home meets as a platform for breast cancer awareness since former Georgia gymnast Talya Vexler was diagnosed with the disease in 2003. But calling for the crowd to the dress in pink is a new addition, riding the heels of the football team’s “blackouts” against Auburn and Hawai’i.

“I think the girls are thinking, ‘OK, the football team had a blackout, let’s see if we can have as much success with it,’” Gym Dogs coach Suzanne Yoculan said.

“And we just feel honored again that we have a sport that allows us an opportunity to increase breast cancer awareness because we have a captivated audience right there in the Coliseum.”

Pink T-shirts from the meet can be purchased at georgiadogs.com. Proceeds go to the Athens Regional Medical Center.

Vexler, a Gym Dog from 1999-2002, has since been cured of breast cancer and now coaches at the University of Iowa.