BATON ROUGE — After upsetting then eighth-ranked Denver 196.625-193.750 Friday night, the LSU gymnastics team moved up two spots to No. 12 in the latest national rankings, released today.
With rankings based on a team’s season average score until Feb. 24, the Tigers’ season-high 196.625 performance increased their average score to an impressive 195.331.
Defending national champion Alabama bounced Utah out of the top spot this week to land in the No. 1 position with a average score of 196.925, while Nebraska (196.837), UCLA (196.808), Utah (196.775) and Georgia (196.737) comprise the rest of the nation’s top five.
LSU is also ranked nationally in each of the four individual events. The Tigers’ highest ranking of 11th comes courtesy of the uneven bars (48.862), while they sit in the No. 12 spot on both the floor (49.000) and vault (48.875) and rank 16th on the beam (48.594).
Individually, the Tigers have three athletes ranked among the top 25.
Sophomore Katherine Hilton is tied for fifth in the nation on the bars after scoring a meet-winning 9.925 on the event in her first collegiate meet.
Junior Lindsay Beddow is also listed among the nation’s elite on the bars, ranking 17th with a season average of 9.862, while freshman April Burkholder is tied for 25th in the country on the floor averaging a score of 9.881 on the season.
LSU returns to action Friday when it welcomes No. 7 Florida to the PMAC. The meet will begin at 7 p.m. and will be broadcast by ESPN on a tape delay basis.