BATON ROUGE — The eighth-ranked LSU gymnastics team welcomes No. 21 Iowa to the Maravich Assembly Center Friday evening at 7 p.m., the sixth consecutive dual meet for the Tigers against a ranked opponent.
The Tigers will look to rebound from a tough loss at 15th-ranked Denver last Saturday night with another difficult opponent.
“Iowa is another tough team on our schedule and we’re going to have to be sharp to come out on top Friday night,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “Iowa has come a long way in a short period and we know they’ll be tough, but we’re also certainly glad to be home the next two weekends.”
Breaux’s top priority on Friday is getting her team to produce four solid rotations. The Tigers are a perfect 3-0 in dual meets when not counting a fall and 0-2 when counting a fall.
“We’ve got to be solid across the board,” added Breaux. “We had a good road showing last week, but when you’re competing against the top teams in the nation every single week, you can’t count a fall and we did last week and we didn’t win. This week we need to be clean on all four events if we want to win.”
Friday night’s meeting marks only the second regular season meeting between the two schools, with LSU taking their only regular season encounter in 1994. The two teams split a pair of postseason meetings in the early 1990s.
Former Tiger gymnast and assistant coach Larissa Libby will make her return to Baton Rouge for the first time since leaving for Iowa prior to the 2001 season.
LSU is ranked in the top 12 in the nation in all four disciplines and will look for the type of balanced effort it received earlier this month when the Tigers upset No. 1 Utah and fourth-ranked Alabama in consecutive weeks behind a pair of 196-point performances.
The Tigers enter ranked fifth in the nation on vault, ninth on both bars and floor and 12th on beam. LSU has yet to slip under 196 points in its first three home outings.
Following the Tigers’ meet with Iowa on Friday night, they welcome 23rd-ranked Kentucky to Baton Rouge on March 1. The Tigers own an overwhelming 42-3 lead in the all-time series between the two SEC schools.