For two and a half years, Boise State gymnast Brittany Potvin-Green tried to conquer the balance beam.

And at her lowest moments, she’d ask co-coach Tina Bird if all her work was for nothing.

“I’d say, ‘No, no. You’re going to be really good,’” Bird said. “… This is the first time she finally believed it.”

Potvin-Green, a junior, made her career beam debut Friday night at Taco Bell Arena — and looked like a cold-blooded veteran. Teammates swarmed her after she stuck the landing.

“I was almost crying I was so excited,” Bird said.

The 9.8 score was the centerpiece of a fantastic night for Potvin-Green, who won the all-around, and the Broncos, who posted a 196.175 to beat Sacramento State and didn’t have a single fall.

The Boise State wrestling team also won, rallying to beat North Dakota State 21-16 to give the Broncos a Beauty and the Beast sweep.

The wrestlers won the final five matches to overcome a 16-3 deficit. Junior Brent Chriswell’s pin in the 197-pound match gave the Broncos the lead and heavyweight J.T. Felix sealed the victory with an 8-5 decision.

“That’s something I feel I need to do — pin to win,” Chriswell said. “I don’t think I need a full match to do it.”

He was unaware of his match’s importance overall. The Broncos trailed by four points with two matches remaining when he took the mat. A pin is worth six points.

“I hope our team wins. I want us to win,” Chriswell said. “But I don’t think about that at all. I don’t think about the team score — nothing but my match.”

It was a milestone day for the Broncos, who celebrated coach Greg Randall’s 48th birthday with his 100th dual win.

It also was just the second win of the season for a team that is rebuilding and was able to compete with all of its key wrestlers in the lineup for the first time.

The dual turned when Michael Cuthbertson won at 165. Scott Bacon (174) and Jake Swartz (184) retained the Broncos’ momentum to set up the big finish.

“I told my guys, ‘If you’re going to give me anything on my birthday, I just want a victory,’” Randall said. “And basically, that’s what happened. That’s all it was. It was ugly, but my team got it done.”

Randall was disappointed that his team didn’t respond to the crowd of 2,845, which inspired the gymnasts.

“You’d think as a wrestler it would pump you up a little bit and make you work harder out there,” he said, “and some of our guys, they don’t get it right now. They just don’t get it.”

The gymnasts’ mood was much brighter.

The Broncos’ 196.175 is a good score at any time, but particularly impressive in the second meet of the season. Last year, the Broncos reached that score just four times and didn’t top 195 in January.

“That was crowd-driven,” co-coach Neil Resnick said.

Potvin-Green certainly thrived amid the two-sport chaos. She won vault (9.875), tied for third on bars (9.825), tied for second on beam and finished third on floor (9.85). She scored a 39.35 in the all-around.

All of her scores were personal bests except for bars.

“It just felt like a lot of hard work finally paid off,” she said.

Bird decided to put Potvin-Green in the beam lineup because for the first time in her career she wasn’t getting rattled when coaches identified certain practice routines as “pressure sets.”

“The last couple months,” Bird said, “she’s been cool as a cucumber.”