BATON ROUGE — The top-ranked LSU women’s track and field team and fourth-ranked men’s team head to Fayetteville, Ark., this weekend for the SEC Indoor Championships at the Randal Tyson Center.
For the first time, the event will be a three-day competition with the pentathlon taking place on Friday night, while the remainder of the competition will be Saturday and Sunday.
The Tigers came up with a tremendous effort in Lexington a year ago to finish second for the third time in four years, while the Lady Tigers have finished fourth each of the previous two years.
Eight of the 11 teams on hand in the men’s competition are ranked in the Top 25, while seven of the 12 women’s teams are ranked. In addition, the top four teams in the nation in the men’s poll will be on hand, as will four of the top six teams in the nation in the women’s poll.
“No sport in the Southeastern Conference has been as successful on a national level as track and field has been,” said LSU head coach Pat Henry. “How many times has a team that’s finished second or third at the SEC Championships gone on to win the NCAA title? The SEC has that kind of talent. This competition this weekend is a gathering of the nation’s premier talent.”
On the women’s side, LSU leads the ay with its No. 1 ranking, but will be challenged by third-ranked Florida, fourth-ranked South Carolina and two-time defending champion and host, No. 16 Arkansas.
LSU has won the women’s competition 10 times, seven more than the next closest school. The Lady Tigers won the event most recently in Gainesville in 1999, their fourth title in a five year stretch from 1995-99.
The Lady Tigers bring a pair of defending champions to Fayetteville this weekend, as Muna Lee will look to conquer a loaded field in the 200-meter dash again, while Bianca Rockett looks to give LSU its sixth triple jump champion in seven years.
Lee will look to give LSU its seventh straight 200-meter champion and will also look to add the only sprint title she didn’t claim in her phenomenal freshman season a year ago, the 60-meter dash. Lee leads the SEC in both events.
Stephanie Durst will join Lee in the 60 and 200-meter fields, as LSU will go head-to-head with South Carolina’s vaunted sprint corps. Durst ranks second in the SEC in the 200 and seventh in the 60-meter dash.
Two critical events for the Lady Tigers will be the 60-meter hurdles and the triple jump, both events that the Lady Tigers can put a number of finalists in or potentially win.
Lolo Jones leads the SEC in the 60-meter hurdles with a season best time of 8.18, while Tiffany Robinson sits fourth at 8.37 and Zamyal Jackson seventh at 7.47.
In the triple jump, the Lady Tigers have three of the top seven jumpers in the nation, as well as provisional qualifier Ashely Gardner who could help give the Tigers a stranglehold on the event.
Nicole Toney ranks second in the conference in the event, while Rockett ranks fourth, Andria Booker fifth and Gardner seventh.
On the men’s side, the points are cut and dry. The Tigers enter the competition with a top-heavy team that should win several events.
Alleyne Francique leads the SEC in the 400-meter dash, while Lueroy Colquhoun ranks second. The two join with Robert Parham and Pete Coley to give the Tigers the SEC’s top ranked 4×400-meter relay as well, as the Tigers will go for their third straight win in the event.
Olympian Walter Davis won both the long and triple jump titles a year ago and will look to become only the second man in SEC history to sweep the horizontal jumps in consecutive years.
Davis is a heavy favorite to win the triple jump, the stronger of his two events, but will face a tremendous challenge from SEC and NCAA leader Miguel Pate of Alabama in the long jump.
The pentathlon will be contested for the first time since 1992 and LSU figures to have the man to beat in three-time SEC decathlon champion Claston Bernard. The Olympian has never competed in a pentathlon, but is the premier multi-event athlete in the nation and the only current decathlete in the NCAA to surpass the 8,000-point barrier.
Following the SEC Indoor Championships, those athletes who are close to qualifying for the NCAA Indoor Championships but have not yet reached the automatic standard will get one last shot at the LSU Last Ditch on Friday. The NCAA Indoor Championships will be held at the Randal Tyson Track Center on March 8-9.