BATON ROUGE — After posting its highest road score of the season, 197.225, in a tri-meet victory over Centenary and Texas Woman’s Friday, the LSU gymnastics team held steady at 12th in the latest national rankings released Monday.
The Tigers improved their regional qualifying score (RQS) by almost two-tenths of a point, moving it to a 196.485. The top-five spots in the standings remain unchanged this week as UCLA leads the nation for the seventh consecutive week with an RQS of 197.980. Nebraska is again holding down the No. 2 spot (197.510), Arizona State is third (197.455) and Georgia (197.300) and Alabama (197.265) are fourth and fifth, respectively.
LSU is ranked among the nation’s top-25 in each of the four events for the 10th straight week. The Tigers own their top ranking of 11th on the uneven bars (49.250) and are ranked 13th on the beam (49.165), 16th on the floor (49.290) and 25th on the vault (49.005).
Freshman sensation April Burkholder cracked the nation’s top-30 in the all-around for the first time in eight weeks after a school record-setting 39.875 performance last week. Burkholder is currently ranked 28th in the country with an RQS of 39.370.
The Houston, Texas, native is also ranked 20th on the floor exercise with an RQS of 9.920. Burkholder became just the third person in school history to record a perfect 10.000 on the event, doing so last week against the Centenary and Texas Woman’s.
The Tiger gymnastics team begins postseason competition Saturday when it travels to Birmingham, Ala., for the SEC Championships. The meet will be held at Bartow Arena with action beginning at 6 p.m. (CST).