BATON ROUGE – The LSU gymnastics program, the defending Southeastern Conference regular season and tournament champions, and head coach D-D Breaux announced the 2018 schedule Monday afternoon.
The slate features meets against five of the 11 teams that advanced to last year’s NCAA Championship as well as six meets inside the Maravich Center during the regular season. Times for each meet along with the television and streaming schedule will be released later this fall.
“We are excited about the 2018 schedule and especially the SEC portion,” Breaux said. “The highlight is always our conference competitions. This year’s team will have a lot of youth and the first four weeks of our schedule will get them ready for the second half of the season.”
LSU will open the season with Arkansas on Friday, Jan. 5 inside the PMAC. The Tigers will then travel to take on Florida on Friday, Jan. 12 at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center. The Gators finished third in the nation and second in the SEC behind LSU last season.
The final SEC contest for the first month of the season will come at home against Alabama on Friday, Jan. 19. The following week will feature one of the most highly anticipated meets of the season in Fort Worth, Texas at the Metroplex Challenge.
February will once again be a busy month with five meets in four weeks. Things kick off against Kentucky on Friday, Feb. 2 followed by another SEC meet at Missouri on Friday, Feb. 9. The weekend of Feb. 16 will feature a double dip with Friday’s contest in St. Charles, Missouri at the Mardi Gras Invitational before returning to the Maravich Center on Sunday to face Texas Woman’s.
The final four-week stretch of the regular season will begin with a trip to Athens, Ga. on Friday, Feb. 23 against the Bulldogs. LSU will welcome Auburn for the final SEC meet of the season on Friday, March 2. The Tigers will travel to North Carolina State on Friday, March 9 and then compete against Arizona on Saturday, March 17 in the final meet inside the Maravich Center.
Postseason competition begins on Saturday, March 24 at the SEC Championship in St. Louis, Missouri. The meet will be hosted at Chaifetz Arena, which was the site of the 2017 NCAA Championship. LSU will compete in the NCAA Regional on Saturday, April 7 at one of six campus sites.
The NCAA Semifinals and Super Six will take place April 20-21 in St. Louis. LSU will compete for its seventh Super Six appearance.
Season ticket requests for the 2018 season are now available at LSUtix.net. Fans interested may sign up for the request list. All requests are assigned at a later date using Philanthropic Point rankings. Any season tickets remaining after requests on the list are filled will go on-sale to the public in December.