DULUTH, Ga. — After a final practice at the Gwinnett Center Friday afternoon the fifth-ranked LSU gymnastics team is set to take on the conference’s best Saturday at the 2004 SEC Championships. Competition will begin at 6 p.m. (CST).
Of the seven teams participating in this year’s championships, four are ranked among the nation’s top-10 and six are included in the top-25. Defending SEC champion, Alabama, enters the meet as the field’s top-ranked team at No. 3. Georgia and LSU follow in the fourth and fifth, respectively. Florida holds down a top-10 ranking at No. 8 and Auburn and Arkansas come in at No. 20 and No. 24, respectively.
“This meet is more intense than the national championships,” said LSU head coach D-D Breaux. “It’s a condensed version of anything you are going to experience down the road, short of maybe being in the Super Six.”
The Tigers enter the meet riding a five-meet win streak that saw them conclude the regular season with the second-best team total in school history (197.650) in their win over Centenary last Friday.
“Of any team we’ve had, I think this one is more focused and certainly more prepared in terms of consistency of performance in getting here,” said Breaux. “After the second or third meet of the season they decided to really focus on doing the little things better and consequently we are ranked in the top-six because they have done that week in and week out.”
The little things have paid off for the Tigers as they have strung together six straight scores of 197.100 or better to wrap up the regular season. LSU will look to continue that streak in the postseason as it aims for its first SEC title in 23 years. The Tigers won their first and only conference crown during the 1981 season. Since then, LSU has recorded nine top-three finishes, most recently finishing second in 2000.
“I think we are prepared,” said Breaux. “What the meet has in store for us I don’t know, but we’ve tried to stress all week that we need to focus on the things we can control. We can’t control the judges, we can’t control the scoring and we certainly can’t control what the other teams are doing. What we can control is our own performance. We are hoping to go in and be consistent and do what we’ve done the past seven or eight outings.”
The Tigers will look to the conference’s top-ranked all-arounder, sophomore April Burkholder, for that consistency. Ranked No. 3 nationally, the 2003 SEC Freshman of the Year enters the meet having won her last seven straight all-around competitions.
Prior to today’s final practice session, the meet’s rotations were determined by a blind draw at the afternoon media luncheon. LSU will begin the meet on the floor, sit out a rotation with a bye, compete on the vault and take a second bye before wrapping up competition on the bars and beam. LSU will sit out the seventh and final rotation with a bye.
Following the SEC Championships, LSU will take a weekend off as it prepares for the NCAA Central Regional Championships to held Friday, April 2, at the Maravich Center.