BATON ROUGE — For the first time since 1999, the NCAA Central Regional Gymnastics Championship comes to the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Saturday night at 6 p.m. with LSU entering at the No. 1 seed.
The sixth-ranked Tigers welcome No. 7 Iowa State, No. 15 Florida, No. 25 Central Michigan, New Hampshire and Illinois State to the six-team field. The top two finishers will qualify for the NCAA Championships in Tuscaloosa, Ala., from April 18-20.
LSU will be gunning for its first regional championship since 1986 but will have its hands full with a very difficult draw. In addition to drawing seventh-ranked Iowa State, a team that has been in the top 10 all season, the Tigers also contend with a Florida team that is 3-0 against them this season.
“It’s a tough draw, but we wouldn’t expect anything less,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “We know it still boils down to us being able to execute for four strong events and if we do then we’ll be in the hunt. There’s no margin for error at this time of year. We need to put together four clean events and if we do then I think we’ll be in position to grab one of those top two spots or possibly win this regional title.”
LSU enters the NCAA Central Regional on the heels of a fourth place finish at the SEC Championships. While the finish wasn’t where Breaux wanted it to be, the Tigers still came up with their second highest road score of the season, an impressive 196.225.
The Tigers have shown remarkable consistency over the past two months and have surpassed the 196-point barrier seven of the last eight meets and have gone over 197.000 twice during that stretch. Iowa State finished second at the Big 12 Championships and will be led by conference all-around champion Sissy Huey.
Florida finished third at the SEC Championships, just ahead of the Tigers, and will be paced by all-arounder Hillary Thompson who placed third at the conference meet.
“Obviously we’ve seen Florida three times this year so we know how good a program they are,” added Breaux. “Iowa State comes from a very strong gymnastics conference and has a great program from top to bottom. There are some other sleepers in the field as well so we’re really going to have to be at our best on Saturday night.”
LSU will be searching for its fifth NCAA Championship berth in the past six years. The Tigers came up just short a year ago, finishing third behind Michigan and Stanford at the NCAA Northeast Regional in Ann Arbor, Mich.
The Tigers will be looking for their 14th NCAA Championship appearance and first since 2000. Breaux understands the advantage of being able to stay home for regional competition this year.
In the past two years her teams have been sent to Tucson, Ariz., and then Ann Arbor a year ago.
“It definitely helps not being shipped across the country because we’ve had to travel pretty good distances each of the past two years,” said Breaux. “More than that, knowing before the season ever started that we would have a chance to compete at home has given us a year-long goal.
“We’ve been aiming for this date since last summer when we found out that we would host the event. It’s nice to not have to travel, to be at home on our equipment and in front of our fans.”
Tickets remain on sale at the LSU Ticket Office on the first floor of the Athletic Administration Building or by calling (225) 578-2184. On the day of competition tickets will be available at the Maravich Assembly Center box office.