BATON ROUGE- The sixth-ranked LSU gymnastics team returns to action Friday night when in-state rival Centenary comes to the Maravich Assembly Center for a 7 p.m. tilt.
Friday night’s meet serves as an important tune-up for the Tigers (8-2), who resume their Southeastern Conference schedule next Friday night with a critical road test at Florida.
“There’s no time for us to take it easy now, we have to post scores that we think will match with the top six in the nation,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We’ve got a critical test coming up next week and we need to be focused heading into Florida and that starts by performing well against Centenary.”
LSU owns a 14-1 record overall against Centenary, including a 196.275-184.00 blowout in Baton Rouge a year ago. The Tigers have beaten Centenary each of the past eight seasons and have won 12 decisions in a row in the series dating back to their only loss in 1984.
Returning to action this weekend for the Tigers will be Shanyn MacEachern, who after back-to-back SEC Gymnast of the Week honors sat out last weekend to rest.
Despite not using several key athletes, the Tigers finished second to Oklahoma at the Texas Woman’s University four-way meet and received a number of encouraging performances. Abbey Burns, who had off-season surgery on her ankle, competed in the all-around for the first time this season and came up with season-highs on the vault, bars and floor, while matching her season-high on the beam.
Marina Degteva came up with a career-best 9.925 on the bars, while Stacey Wegener went 9.90 on the floor in her best outing of the season.
In addition, Stephanie Hyett increased her work load, competing in three events, as she continues to work towards competing in the all-around. Hyett came up with a season-best 9.875 on the beam.
Following the Centenary meet, the Tigers head to Florida next week for a showdown with the Gators, Iowa State and North Carolina State before returning home against Auburn on March 3 for the final home meet for LSU’s seven seniors.