BERKELEY - Improving its overall team score by over three points, the California men's gymnastics team saw some improvements from its season opener in Saturday's tri meet against Stanford and Air Force from Haas Pavilion. 

The Golden Bears finished with a score of 385.700, after Stanford's 401.850 but better than Air Force's 369.400.

The day started great for Cal, as the Bears posted a team score of 69.200 on floor, an improvement from their mark of 64.750 in the Benefit Cup last Saturday. In addition, the score was also better than Stanford (67.950). Cal improved in three events from last week - floor, rings and vault. 

"There were some things that were much better, but still some things that were sub-par from what we're capable of," head coach JT Okada said. "We started great on floor. It's always great to have a hot start like that. We beat Stanford by over a point on floor, so that's a victory there. Pommel horse wasn't near what we're capable of there, though. We picked it back up on rings and vault, despite a couple shaky routines, but we finished strong and we'll keep building off of this."

Darren Wong paced the Bears in four of the six events, including tying his personal best on parallel bars with his mark of 13.750. He also posted a 14.150 on floor, a 13.500 on horse and a 13.450 on high bar. Kyte Crigger enjoyed season bests on floor, rings and vault.

"Darren and Kyte had great days," Okada said. "They were five-for-five in all their events, all their scores counted. They were the rocks of our team today. Jonathan Wang did the all-around. He didn't do as well as he would have liked, but all of his scores counted for us. Those three guys are core all-arounders. From there, we're going to need to build off of them and continue to get better."

Another highlight of the day came on vault where Yu-Chen Lee posted a career-best 13.900. Cal picked up two scores over 14 in the event led by Asad Jooma's 14.100 and Kyle Shuttle's 14.050. 

Angel Haro suffered an injury during his parallel bars routine, which caused him to be unable to compete on high bar in the final event. Okada emphasized that the team needs to improve on being able to step in whenever an injury like that occurs. It threw the Bears off a little bit at the end. 

Cal will stay local next weekend, heading down to Stanford for the Stanford Open on Saturday, Jan. 25, at 7 p.m.