BATON ROUGE- Just over a week ago the LSU gymnastics team had never beaten a No. 1-ranked team. Now they have beaten two in a row.
For the second consecutive week the seventh-ranked LSU gymnastics team shocked the No. 1 team in the land, as this time new No. 1 Alabama was the victim in a thrilling 196.325-196.250 decision before 2,953 at the Maravich Assembly Center Friday night.
In a scenario similar to a week ago, the Tigers trailed heading into the final rotation, but put together a near perfect floor rotation to erase a .2 deficit. Shanyn MacEachern capped off the Tigers’ second dramatic run in as many weeks with a 9.925, needing a 9.85 to tie and a 9.875 to seal victory.
The Tigers’ celebration was put on hold by a lengthy appeal by Alabama head coach Sarah Patterson on a .10 deduction on the beam that would have given victory to the Tide, but the appeal was denied.
While the Tigers have defeated Alabama at the SEC and the NCAA level on numerous occasions in recent years, the victory was their first over the Tide in a dual meet since 1982.
“This is unbelievable,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We held it together and stepped it up again with everything on the line and won. We’ve got seven seniors on this squad who have never beaten Alabama and they came out and executed and deserved to win this meet.”
LSU opened the meet with a season-best performance on the vault of 48.950 behind a winning score of 9.875 from senior Kerry Descalopoulis. At the same time, Alabama opened with a 49.175 on the bars to take a slight lead after the first rotation.
The Tigers made up the deficit quickly with a 48.925 on the bars behind a 9.850 from Beth Boudreaux. At the same time the Tide came up with a sub-par 48.650 on the vault and the Tigers led by .05 at the halfway point.
Alabama applied all the pressure to LSU, as a 9.95 from Andree` Pickens, who also won the all-around, gave the Tide an eye-popping 49.400 on the floor. At the same time the Tigers recorded a solid 49.150 on the beam behind a winning mark of 9.875 from Stacey Wegener to put them in position to win with a solid floor rotation.
Kim Descalopoulis and Marina Degteva came up with identical 9.875s while Boudreaux registered a 9.85 to set the stage for MacEachern.
The Tigers close out as difficult a three-week stretch as they could ever have imagined on a positive note. After nearly beating third-ranked Georgia in Athens on Jan. 23, the Tigers finished out a stretch against three of the top four teams in the nation with a 2-1 record.
Now the Tigers set their sites on a three-way meet with Texas Woman’s University and Oklahoma next Saturday before returning home for Centenary on Feb. 18.