BATON ROUGE — The 12th-ranked LSU gymnastics team will look to rebound from last weekend’s sub-par performance at Alabama on Friday night when the Tigers welcome Centenary, Towson State and Texas Woman’s University to the Maravich Assembly Center for a 7 p.m. tilt.
The Tigers (2-2 overall, 1-2 in SEC action) are coming off a loss at Alabama that showed how good they can be at times, but also demonstrated the inconsistencies of a young program. After recording a score of 49.525 on bars against Denver on Jan. 26, the Tigers scored a full point lower in the first rotation last Friday and set the tone for the struggles that would plague them the entire evening.
“We’ve shown at times that we’re capable of being a very, very good team,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “Go back two weeks and we put together a very nice performance against Denver. Last weekend, however, we shot ourselves in the foot. We need to put together four good rotations and that starts on Friday night. If we stop hurting ourselves, we have some very good gymnastics in front of us.”
LSU enters the meet with an 18-1 combined all-time record against the three schools, including victories over both Centenary and Texas Woman’s University a year ago. LSU has never faced Towson State in the regular season but is undefeated against the Maryland school in postseason.
The Tigers only scored better than 49 on one event on Friday night, a 49.050 on floor, causing Breaux to try and open things up a little more in their quadrangular meet on Friday.
“We’re going to throw more difficulty out there on Friday,” said Breaux. “We’ve got two extremely difficult competitions in back-to-back weeks following Friday night’s meet and we need to be make sure we’re clicking heading into those meets.”
The Tigers will count heavily on the junior trio of Nicki Arnstad, Beth Boudreaux and Marina Degteva who will all be expected to contribute solid scores in three events.
LSU will also count heavily on Sharene Mamby who owns two bars titles this season, including a perfect 10.0 against Denver, and freshman Amanda Mueller, who has become a top threat on both bars and beam.
Following the Tigers’ quadrangular meet on Friday night they host Florida next Friday night in their annual “Tiger Attack,” a fan-friendly evening filled with promotions and giveaways. The next weekend LSU heads to the Nebraska Master’s Challenge, a five-way in which all but one team is ranked in the top 25 in the nation.