SEATTLE – After five straight meets against Southeastern Conference opponents, the 13th-ranked LSU gymnastics team will step out of conference competition to take on No. 23 Washington and Seattle Pacific in a tri-meet Friday.
The meet starts at 9 p.m. CT from Washington’s Alaska Airlines Arena, and live audio will be available in the Geaux Zone at www.LSUsports.net/live.
LSU (2-7) heads into the meet with some confidence after back-to-back 196 scores, including a season-high 196.850 last week at No. 2 Florida. The 196.850 marked the highest score for the Tigers since a 197.150 on March 12, 2010 at home against Iowa, and head coach D-D Breaux said the team is eager to score higher against Washington and Seattle Pacific.
“We want to get better,” Breaux said. “We need to work with a little more focus and purpose so our performances can incrementally continue to improve. We feel we are down to where we just need to fix the little things.”
This marks the second straight season with a trip to the Pacific Northwest after LSU opened the 2011 season at Oregon State, but this will be the Tigers first appearance in Seattle since the 2003 NCAA Regional hosted by Washington in which LSU placed second to advance to the NCAA Championships.
“There is some really good gymnastics out on the West coast, and the Pac-12 is stacked with great gymnastics teams,” Breaux said. “If the judges are from that area they will have seen great gymnastics, so it will be interesting to see if we stack up to their measuring stick of what’s good because SEC teams don’t go out there very often.”
LSU hit on 23 of 24 performances at Florida with three scores of 9.90 or higher and 11 of 9.85 or better against the Gators. Freshman Lloimincia Hall earned a season-high 39.450 in the all-around to finish second in the meet, and she tied her high floor score for the third time this season with a 9.90.
Rheagan Courville, Kaleigh Dickson, Ericka Garcia, Jessie Jordan, Randi Lau, Ashley Lee and Sarie Morrison all scored a 9.80 or higher at least once last week, while Lainie Fleming and Maliah Mathis narrowly missed with a 9.775 on bars and 9.75 on vault, respectively.
Washington (3-5) posted a season-high 195.725 on Jan. 22, and the Huskies earned a 194.150 to finish third out of four teams last week at the Masters Classic in Lincoln, Neb.
Seattle Pacific (4-5) is an NCAA Division II team with a 192.575 season-high score, and the Falcons are ranked fourth among teams that will compete at the USAG national championships.
LSU is 7-4 all-time against Washington, and this is the first meeting between the Tigers and Seattle Pacific.
With three teams competing Friday, the meet will operate like a postseason event with LSU starting on bars and rotating to beam and floor before finishing on vault. In a normal road dual meet, LSU would start on bars and move to vault in the second rotation.
“I think it’s good for us that it will be more like a postseason meet with the format, so hopefully the kids will handle it and compete well in that environment,” Breaux said. “At this point everything is about improving each week to move up in the rankings and prepare for the SEC Championship.”
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