BATON ROUGE — Topping last week’s season-high with a score of 196.475, the 13th-ranked LSU gymnastics team defeated the No. 7 Florida Gators in front of a season-best 2,101 fans.
The Tigers captured every event with the exception of the vault while posting season-high scores on the beam (49.100) and the floor (49.500).
Beth Boudreaux put together a career performance competing in just her second career all-around. The junior won her first all-around title (39.425) as well as capturing the beam with her second consecutive 9.900 performance.
“Beth was tremendous,” LSU head coach D-D Breaux said. “She’s just a good competitor. She is very self-confident, and she competes with a reckless spirit.”
Nicki Arnstad placed second in the all-around with a score of 39.325. She capped the Tiger victory with a career-best performance on the floor posting a score of 9.975. Arnstad also added a career-high in the bars of 9.800.
In the uneven parallel bars, the Tigers’ Marina Degteva posted a career-high 9.925 for the fourth time in her career. Degteva also earned a share of the vault (9.800) that saw five gymnasts post identical scores.
“We trained really hard and focused on this competition,” Breaux continued. “We have not let up in our confidence in them in practice. If they made a mistake in competition we stayed with them and kept them in the line-up. I think they began to believe in themselves tonight.”
LSU will take their victory to Lincoln, Nebraska next weekend where the No. 6 Nebraska Cornhuskers host the Master’s Challenge, a meet in which four of the five teams competing are ranked in the top 25.