And she knew it:

Paseka did not.

The U.S. had three team members who do Amanars -- the difficult and dangerous vault we've heard so much about -- while Russia only had two. Aliya Mustafina made the most of her less valuable double-twisting Yurchenko -- that's one and a half flips plus two twists.

Viktoria Komova and Paseka gave away points on their landings. At the end of this event, the U.S. had an almost 2-point lead.

A note on scoring: We have received requests to explain the confusing system NBC has adopted to explain the confusing scoring system that replaced the perfect 10. Don't bother with their green, yellow, red ratings. To keep it simple, if you want to win, you need a score above 15 on beam and floor. You want at least a mid-15 on bars. And you want as close to 16 as possible on vault. Only Maroney has scored over a 16 so far.

Bars

This is where Russia had the chance to destroy the U.S. The Americans are just not as good at bars. Our one bars star, Gabby Douglas, performs her skills beautifully, but the Russians still have the difficulty advantage. Douglas got amazing air time on her release moves, but only scored a 15.2. Kyla Ross got a 14.933 and Jordyn Wieber got a 14.666.

Komova, Russia's best performer on bars, got a 15.766.

Her teammate Anastasia Grishina got a 14.7 and Aliya Mustafina scored 15.7. The U.S. lead shrunk to 0.4 points.

Beam

With the American lead narrowed, there was a huge chance the Russians could overtake them. Jordyn Wieber's beam didn't score very well in prelims, Gabby Douglas carries the stigma of having choked on beam many times early in her career, and Aly Raisman tends to get deductions for her leaps.

But Russia gave it away. Aliya Mustafina made big wobbles. Viktoria Komova, whose style is closest to the ease and grace showed by Nadia Comaneci...

...gave away tenths of a point on wobbles....

... and was so off on her dismount that she had to run off the mat to keep from falling on her butt.

Beam is where Russian tears made their first appearance. The Americans held it together. Kyla Ross lead off with a steady routine.

Douglas did one of the most solid routines she's ever done in competition -- no big wobbles, no falls.

And Raisman, who's always reliable on beam, anchored the event:

The American lead grew to 1.3 points.

Floor

Aliya Mustafina performed beautifully on floor. She's a sentimental favorite among fans for her dramatic style. NBC calls her a "diva," which seems to apply to any female athlete who wears girly things and really wants to win.

She doesn't have the same high difficulty score since she tore her ACL on an Amanar in 2011, and when she finished, you could see her favoring one leg a little. Her tumbling isn't as sharp anymore. But she did her job.

Next was Anastasia Grishina. The Russians chose Grishina over Komova, who qualified in first place in the all-around in prelims. That's perhaps because Komova sometimes loses energy late in the competition, and because Grishina just learned a difficult double-twisting-double-back-flip tumbling run. But she couldn't finish her second tumbling pass. Here's what it was supposed to look like: