BATON ROUGE — After posting a season-high 195.900 in its win over Arkansas last week, the LSU gymnastics team jumped to No. 5 in the national rankings on Monday with a 195.725 team average.
The rankings top-four remain unchanged from a week ago with Florida listed at No. 1 (196.975), followed by Georgia (196.642) at No. 2 and Alabama and Utah tied at No. 3 (196.362).
LSU jumped Stanford and Michigan in the standings who dropped to ninth and sixth, respectively. The remainder of the top 10 includes Oklahoma at No. 7, UCLA at No. 8 and Arkansas at No. 10.
The Tigers also maintained or improved their rankings on three of the four individual events. LSU held steady at No. 4 on the floor and No. 7 on the bars and moved up four places to No. 11 on the beam, while slipping two spots to No. 6 on the vault.
Individually, junior Ashleigh Clare-Kearney moved into a two-way tie with Florida’s Melanie Sinclair for the nation’s lead in the all-around. Both are averaging an exceptional 39.525.
Clare-Kearney is also ranked on each of the four individual events. She’s in a three-way tie for second on the vault with a 9.925 average, a five-way tie for fourth on the floor (9.900), a two-way tie for sixth on the beam (9.858) and is listed at No. 11 on the bars (9.842).
The Tigers return to action this Saturday when they travel to Georgia for a 3 p.m. dual meet at Stegeman Coliseum.
National Rankings ? Jan. 21, 2008
Rank Team Name Team Ave
1 Florida 196.975
2 Georgia 196.642
t3 Alabama 196.362
t3 Utah 196.362
5 LSU 195.725
6 Michigan 195.675
7 Oklahoma 195.583
8 UCLA 195.550
9 Stanford 195.375
10 Arkansas 195.275
11 Oregon State 194.750
12 Penn State 194.575
13 Nebraska 194.542
14 Arizona 194.112
– Missouri 194.112
16 Denver 194.050
17 Auburn 193.925
18 Ohio State 193.650
19 North Carolina 193.575
20 Arizona State 193.575
21 Iowa State 193.300
22 Illinois-Champaign 192.950
23 Kent State 192.825
24 Michigan State 192.812
25 Iowa 192.675