Preseason rankings are a loose guideline for the expected results of any given sport. The No. 5 Illinois men’s gymnastics team proved the rankings wrong Saturday night, head coach Justin Spring said, as it posted the nation’s highest score of the weekend at the 40th annual Windy City Invitational in Chicago.

The Illini tallied a score of 353.750, besting four other top-10 teams — No. 4 Michigan (351.350), No. 7 Ohio State (347.150), No. 10 Iowa (339.600), No. 8 Minnesota (337.650) — and No. 11 UIC (328.750).

“This was our first competition, and it’s early in the season, but we should be ranked No. 1 after this weekend because we had the highest scores in the country, which is great because it’s so early,” Spring said. “We just want to get closer and closer to being perfect. We had a great first showing, and it’ll be a battle against ourselves now.”

The team performed well, junior Daniel Ribeiro said, but it wasn’t perfect, as there were falls in the beginning of each section. However, it helped that the Illini were able to drop two routines in each set and were aided by several “moments of greatness” that Ribeiro said pushed them to the top of the competition.

Junior Paul Ruggeri took first place in the all-around with a score of 88.600; first in the high bar, posting a 15.600; and second on the vault and floor exercise, scoring 15.800 and 15.550, respectively. He also tied for fourth on the parallel bars with a 14.450.

“I am very pleased with my performance,” Ruggeri said. “I wasn’t expecting to do that well, but I have been training hard and having decent practices. I’m lucky to start the season healthy and just have to keep fighting.”

Another standout performance came from senior Chad Wiest in the floor exercise. In his first meet since breaking his arm at the Big Ten Championships two years ago, Wiest took first place with a career-high score of 15.650.

“This was his first competition back in two years; he had a rough comeback,” Spring said. “He had a lot of complications with his elbow surgery. It took almost two full years for him to come back, so for him to come and show up that strongly on floor it shows that, by all means, he’s going to be a strong competitor on other events as well, so we’re really excited to have Chad back.”

One pleasant sight for Spring was the performance by freshman Yoshi Mori, who placed first on the vault with 15.900. Mori joined the team late because of eligibility issues.

“We had some eligibility issues to work out, so he just started last Wednesday, so he hasn’t been training much,” Spring said. “He’s just been working on his academics. He’s been amazing. He is definitely going to be able to do some incredible things with some more training.”

Spring, who was pleased with the team’s performance and a win to start his first season as head coach, said the Illini will now strive for perfection and hitting 100 percent.

Ribeiro said the team was happy to prove its success at the meet and show that it has potential for even greater things.

“This was a very exciting meet for the start of the season,” Ribeiro said. “We proved to the nation that Illinois isn’t No. 5 — it’s No. 1. We are definitely in there for the national championship.”