Rivalries are never easy to lose, but a win is not deserved unless the victory is earned.

The Sacramento State women’s gymnastics team defeated themselves, 195.500-193.575, with countless errors in a head-to-head competition tonight against UC Davis in The Pavilion.

This is the second out of three regular-season meetings between the two schools and the loss drops the Hornets to 5-7 against the Aggies since assistant coach Tamara Ross joined the UC Davis Staff in 2009.

Junior Kalliah McCartney contributed top scores for the Hornets on bars, vault and beam, but could not hit 4-for-4 as she fell on her last tumbling pass on floor.

Sac State head coach Kim Hughes said it was very unlike McCartney to fall on floor and the team cannot expect to win with careless mistakes.

“We can’t count falls and be competing,” Hughes said. “We’ve talked about that and they know that.”

McCartney recorded a first-place 9.850 vault score, 9.775 on bars and finished with a 9.800 on beam.

Going into the second rotation, freshman Julia Konner tweaked her knee during vault warm-up, so freshman Jesse Williams filled in with a huge 9.825 performance.

Konner tried warming up floor in the next rotation, but said she didn’t want to risk further injury and chose to sit out the rest of the meet.

“I landed short and jarred my knee and decided to rest it for next week,” Konner said.

After Konner was ruled out, senior Maddie Montoya, originally set to exhibition, was bumped into floor lineup for the first time this season and put up a solid 9.625 performance.

Coming off of a career-high floor performance last week, junior Dallas Smith showed off again in a 9.8 fashion to give her a second-place finish.

“The floor performances were flat,” Hughes said. “Dallas was the only exceptional performance.”

Another gymnast battling a knee injury is senior Kailey Hansen, which has played a big factor in her recent performances, especially on beam.

“Our goal is for everyone to hit all their routines in one meet, but we’ve been having a rough time doing that,” Hansen said.

Hansen said she made a deal with Hornets’ assistant coach Tanya Ho to go back to her old routine that won her WAC beam champion in 2012 and a trip to the NCAA Corvallis Regional as a beam specialist in 2013.

“I made a deal with Tanya that if I fell last week, which was the third time in a row, that I would go back to my routine from last year,” Hansen said. “After I was thrown in the lineup for Julia I got really nervous, but knew I could do it because I’ve had a lot of success with that routine.”

Davis was well ahead after the third rotation, 146.775-145.125, after setting a new university record on beam, scoring 49.000 or over for the first time in program history.

The Hornets will look to improve next when they travel to meet MPSF opponent Seattle Pacific Feb. 7 at 7 p.m.

Jillian Kweller can be reached on Twitter @JillianKweller