“To an outsider it looks like we’re having a bad season,” senior gymnast April Burkholder said after her team’s second place finish to then No. 2 Florida.
And it does. To an outsider, a team with a 13-11 record would probably not have a ranking as high as No. 7 in the country.
No. 1 Georgia’s 21-0 looks much different by comparison.
As an outsider, when I began covering the gymnastics beat this semester, it certainly looked like the team was having a bad season.
I watched LSU finish fourth Jan. 6 in the Super Six and then a month later lose to Georgia on Feb. 4. The Tigers had notable losses to rivals such as Auburn, Oklahoma and Alabama. But with each loss the Tigers went up, not down, in the rankings.
No longer being an outsider, I can explain why.
In every one of the Tigers’ losses, they posted high marks.
Against Georgia, Auburn and Oklahoma, LSU posted and then exceeded its season high scores – in losses to those teams.
Though it lost, LSU scored higher than most teams in the country, just not higher than the other team that night.
In fact, any combined score of 195.000 or better doesn’t constitute a bad meet, especially now that the new Olympic judging has been implemented, making perfect 10’s almost impossible to obtain.
With each loss except Florida, the Tigers either remained the same or went up in rankings.
But none of that matters now. The Tigers can score the highest they have all season, they can set school records, they can set world records, but if two other schools score even .001 higher, it is all over for LSU.
The almost-still-counts rankings that have gotten LSU to where it is now will no longer mean anything at 6 p.m. today.
Then again, the gymnasts have never said they were happy with the result of a losing meet.
But going into tonight the team said they are prepared but calm.
“Just take it as another meet and another opportunity to get better on your way to NCAAs,” said senior Kelly Lea.
But if they want to advance, it needs to be just a little better than any other meet.
Brad is a junior in print journalism.
Contact him at [email protected]
