BATON ROUGE — It will be a top-five showdown at Stegeman Coliseum Saturday afternoon as the fifth-ranked LSU gymnastics team travels to Athens, Ga., to take on second-ranked Georgia at 3 p.m.
The meet will be televised to a national audience by ESPN2 on a tape delay basis. The broadcast is scheduled to air Sunday, Feb. 10 at 11:30 a.m.
Members of the Geaux Zone can watch a live video stream of the event online at www.LSUsports.net/live. Geaux Zone members will also have access to LSU’s live audiocast of the competition. Mike Smith will handle those play-by-play duties, while Jewel Fourrier and Tina Suhr will provide analysis.
The Tigers enter the meet with a perfect 5-0 record, a slate that includes a 1-0 mark in SEC action. LSU is coming off a, 195.900-195.300, victory over conference foe Arkansas last week. The score, a season high for the Tigers, came behind four individual event totals of 48.825 or better.
LSU will look to all-arounders Ashleigh Clare-Kearney and Susan Jackson to continue to pace the squad. Clare-Kearney has been nearly unstoppable in the Tigers’ first three meets, winning three all-around and 10 individual event titles. She is tied for No. 1 in the nation in the all-around, averaging a 39.525 this season.
Jackson has improved in each and every outing this season. Last week at Arkansas, the sophomore from Spring, Texas, tallied a career-high 39.225 to earn a second-place finish.
Georgia counters with a pair of impressive all-arounders in juniors Courtney Kupets and Tiffany Tolnay. Kupets, the two-time defending NCAA all-around champion, is currently ranked ninth in the country in the all-around with a 39.333 average. Tolnay is just behind her, averaging a 39.250 for a No. 16 ranking.
As a team, Georgia is 2-1 on the year after falling to No. 3 Utah and then defeating No. 5 Stanford and No. 1 Florida. The GymDogs, the three-time defending NCAA champions, enter the competition ranked among the top-10 on each of the four individual events. They are listed at No. 2 on the vault, bars and floor and No. 7 on the beam.
LSU will have a big challenge on its hands when it enters Stegeman Coliseum as Georgia lead the all-time series between the two teams, 54-15-2, a record that includes a 16-3 mark in Athens.
Following the Georgia meet, the Tigers return to the friendly confines of the Pete Maravich Assembly Center on Friday, Feb. 1, as they prepare to take on Kentucky at 7 p.m.