BATON ROUGE — The top-ranked LSU gymnastics team closes out its three-meet road trip with a visit to No. 20 Auburn on Friday at 7 p.m.
“This is the turning point of the season,” head coach D-D Breaux said. “It’s the midway point, and what we want to try to accomplish in this meet is to maintain consistency.”
The Tigers, who earned their first No. 1 ranking in program history this week, boast a 7-3 record including 4-1 in the Southeastern Conference heading into this weekend’s matchup. They are averaging a 196.184 mark per competition.
“We’re going to try not to let the No. 1 ranking enter into any of our decisions or any of our behavior,” Breaux said. “We’ve never been here before; we’ve always competed as the underdog trying to knock off the people ahead of us.
“We certainly don’t want to look back, but at the same time, we have to work on the process and focus on only that. That’s what we’ve been doing, and that’s why this team is so successful.”
Auburn holds a 2-5 overall mark and stands at 1-4 in conference action. They are coming off a loss to then-No. 9 Oklahoma last weekend where they posted a season-low 191.100.
The meeting is the 58th for the two teams. LSU leads the all-time series 49-8 and is ahead 8-3 when competing in Auburn.
LSU has won five meets in a row, including two road victories last weekend over top-25 opponents Kentucky and Ohio State.
In addition to the No. 1 overall team rankings, LSU also reigns supreme on both the floor and the vault. Individually, junior All-American April Burkholder owns the top ranking on the floor competition as well. She is questionable for Friday’s meet after hitting her head on the beam in the team’s last competition.
Breaux is excited about traveling to Auburn because she feels it will give her team some familiarity with the site of the National Championships for the end of the season.
“I think that going to Auburn where the National Championships are going to be held will be a real bonus for us, to get there and be familiar with it so when we go back to nationals it won’t be a new arena for any of our competitors,” Breaux commented.
After meeting Auburn, LSU returns home for a quad meet March 4 against Illinois, New Hampshire and Western Michigan at 7 p.m.
Auburn will provide live stats and the link will be made available on LSU’s official Web site, www.LSUsports.net.