BATON ROUGE – – LSU’s swimming and diving team is going on the road to face Southeastern Conference rival Alabama for a pivotal early season meet Friday afternoon.
“It’s going to be a very competitive meet,” said head coach Rick Meador. “We’re on the road, and Alabama is a lot better than the teams we have faced so far this season. But I’m looking forward to the trip and hopefully we’ll come back to Baton Rouge with two wins.”
The Tigers are 1-0 going into the meet, while the Lady Tigers have a 3-0 overall record and a 1-0 mark in the SEC. The Crimson Tide men’s team is 1-0 on the season after defeating Northeast Louisiana 135.5 to 95.5. The women swept its opening double-dual meet to obtain an early 2-0 record.
In the last 21 seasons, both the Tigers and Lady Tigers have only once won in Tuscaloosa at the same time. That happened in 1997, which was the last time that the team traveled to Alabama to take on the Tide.
The Lady Tigers have done extremely well this season due to the key play of senior captain Melissa Knox, sophomore Ali Petersen, and junior freestyler Mandy Leach. The three LSU swimmers have combined for eight first-place finishes in only two meets.
The No. 25 ranked LSU women’s swimming and diving team defeated Houston (65-47) and UL at Monroe (73-34) in their last outing, while at the same time the 18th ranked Tigers convincingly won its opening meet of the season against UL at Monroe 138-91.
The Tigers top performers against UL at Monroe were sophomore All-American Rodrigo Castro, junior captain Ken Kuhn, and diver Erik Petursson. All three placed first in each of their opening two events of the season.
The LSU Fighting Tigers will take on the Alabama Crimson Tide at 3 p.m. Friday afternoon in the Alabama Aquatic Center. Last year, the Tigers swept the meet in Baton Rouge.