The Arizona gymnastics team has reached the point in their season where they perform up to expectations, or they go home.

The eighth-ranked Wildcats (25-4 overall, 10-3 in the Pacific 10 Conference) will take the first step towards their goal of a national championship when they travel to Salt Lake City to compete in the Midwest Regionals tomorrow night.

Arizona will be facing No. 3 Utah, No. 7 Arizona State, No. 9 Brigham Young, No. 13 Nebraska, No. 18 Utah State and unranked Denver. And while the Wildcats will be facing some stiff competition, the UA coaching staff is still confident they can do the job.

"We have the talent to win the whole thing," UA head coach Jim Gault said. "Now it's just a matter of working on our mental errors and eliminating our falls."

The way the Regionals work is that every team starts out on a clean slate. The winner of each of the five regions will get an automatic bid, with the next seven best scores receiving an at-large bid to the national championships.

Each region also seeds the seven teams in order of their RQS (regional qualifying score). The Wildcats earned a number three seed, which will have them competing in the order of beam, floor, vault and bars.

"If we couldn't be the first seed, we wanted the third," Gault said. "That puts our stronger events at the end of the meet. Not to say we don't have a strong team on the beam, but that is the event that is sometimes a bit unpredictable."

The all-around lineup for the Wildcats will consist of freshman Heidi Hornbeek, junior Tenli Poggemeyer and freshman Maureen Kealey. Hornbeek, the Pac-10 champion in the all-around, has been Arizona's top gun all season and is currently ranked seventh in the nation in the all-around. Arizona will also have three all-conference members competing, with junior Becky Bowers (bars), sophomore Nancy Milberger (beam) and Hornbeek (all-around, bars and floor).

"When we set up our all-around lineup, it's usually just an educated guess on who you think will do the best job," UA assistant coach Bill Ryden said. "That is one advantage of having as much depth as we do."