BATON ROUGE — LSU gymnastics head coach D-D Breaux has learned a great deal about her young squad through two meets this season. Friday night she will get to learn how her team responds to adversity, as the 23rd-ranked Tigers will look to rebound from a loss to Georgia last weekend when No. 21 Denver comes to the Assembly Center for a 7 p.m. meet.
The meet will be broadcast by College Sports Southeast on a tape-delayed basis and will air on Jan. 30 at 10:30 p.m. CT.
LSU will look to rebound from a Georgia outing that showed how good the Tigers can be, but also demonstrated some of the inconsistencies of a young team. The Tigers were in a tightly contested meet with Georgia through two rotations, but faltered on beam and came up with a sub-par floor performance to separate the two teams.
If the Tigers are to reverse their fortunes on Friday, they will have to put together four consistent rotations.
“This is a really good test for us against a really good team,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We’re going through that whole process right now of figuring out what are our best lineups and we need to find that consistency. We’re a very good team but we have to prove that we’re a very good team and Friday night is a good opportunity to do that.”
Friday night’s meeting will be the fourth all-time meeting between the two schools with LSU having won each of the previous three, including a decisive victory in the their last meeting in 1998. Denver missed qualifying for the NCAA Championships as a team last year by a mere .025 but still managed to qualify three individuals for the NCAA all-around competition. The Pioneers have finished ranked 16th each of the past two seasons.
LSU will once again count heavily on its upperclassmen to pave the way for its newcomers. Junior Nicki Arnstad has been on fire through two meets this season and has already claimed three titles. Arnstad has won the floor titles in both the Kentucky and Georgia meets, while winning the all-around against Kentucky and finishing second in the event last week.
Fellow juniors Beth Boudreaux and Marina Degteva have turned into solid three-event performers for the Tigers. Boudreaux has been a solid bars, beam and floor threat for the Tigers and can even step up on vault and compete in the all-around as she was forced to last week when two-time vault All-American Shanyn MacEachern was unable to go.
Degteva has become a solid vault, bars and floor threat for the Tigers and through two meets has registered four scores of 9.80 or better in six total performances.
Senior Sharene Mamby gave the Tigers a huge boost on bars last weekend, winning the event with a 9.90. Mamby missed the entire 2000 season with an Achilles’ injury but has been critical in each of the Tigers two meets this season anchoring the Tigers’ bar lineup.
The Tigers were dealt an unfortunate blow just prior to the start of the Georgia meet as sophomore Rebecca Lightsey, who finished third on beam at the SEC Championships a year ago, tore both her anterior cruciate and medial collateral ligaments in warm-ups and will be gone for the season. As a result, the Tigers struggled on beam last week and were forced to count a fall.
LSU will need its newcomers to step up in Lightsey’s absence.
“Beam can still be a very strong event for us, it was in our victory against Kentucky,” added Breaux. “We just need to find the right combination but it will certainly hurt not having Rebecca in our lineup.”
Following the Denver meet the Tigers take to the road and travel to Tuscaloosa for a showdown with No. 2 Alabama. The meet will mark LSU’s third straight television appearance, as the meet will once again be broadcast by College Sports Southeast.