ST. LOUIS — Many teams often have trouble translating the enthusiasm and momentum from semifinal night into Super Six night, but not LSU. Not this year.
The second-ranked Tigers learned their lesson after a slight dip in both energy and scoring from Semifinal II to the Super Six in 2017.
“I feel like this team had a little bit better mentality about what it’s going to take to win today and what it’ll take to come back tomorrow and have the best meet,” said LSU coach D-D Breaux.
The result came in a second-place finish in 2018’s Semifinal I, with a score of 197.4750 and another Super Six berth. It was clearly not the Tigers’ best performance; they were easily able to post a good enough score to compete and leave enough energy for the Super Six.
“I didn’t want to expend all the emotion,” Breaux said. “I didn’t want to gobble up all the momentum and feel like everything had to be laid on the line today. I think we’ve all learned something last year.”
While it was not without a few bumps in the road, the Tigers still put up a number of stand-out performances. 
The three all-arounders for the day — senior Myia Hambrick, sophomore Kennedi Edney and junior Sarah Finnegan — finished second, third and fourth, respectively, in the all-around. 

Breaux said the turning point in the meet was freshman all-arounder Reagan Campbell’s 9.85 beam routine after a fall from fellow freshman Christina Desiderio.

Campbell’s strong performance allowed the Tigers to build up confidence at the end of the rotation and continue that throughout the rest of the meet, especially for Desiderio to come back and put up a career-high 9.8875 on floor. 

“That was huge,” Breaux said. “I told her when [the fall] happened, ‘the sky didn’t fall down. Its not the end of anything. Your teammates will back you up. This will end well, and you’re going to do a great job on floor.’ And she did.”
UCLA, LSU’s only losses in both the regular season and postseason now, edged the Tigers out on the last routine of the last event. UCLA junior Katelyn Ohashi pushed the Bruins over the top with a 9.9625 to anchor on floor.
“UCLA is a great team,” Breaux said. “We really tried to have our kids take this meet just a little bit lighter, a little bit less pressure on themselves than we did in the first day last year. Hopefully that’ll bode well for us.”
Breaux and the Tigers were well aware of the closeness of the two teams throughout the meet.
Breaux explains that while she doesn’t normally like to focus on scores during the meet, she was concerned about the rotations for tomorrow’s Super Six as it concerns the seeding.
Because of LSU’s second-place finish, it will be bye, bars, beam, bye, floor, vault.
UCLA, on the other hand, will go floor, vault, bye, bars, beam, bye. 
“We start on bars half the season every time we go away,” senior all-arounder Myia Hambrick said. “For this team, ending on floor and vault is not really a big challenge. We’re used to having to bring out the power in the end. I don’t really think it’s going to be a problem.”
For LSU, the rotation doesn’t matter. What matters is just going out and doing their gymnastics.
This team has always found a way to overcome any difficulties it has faced this season. The bye rotations that cause so many teams trouble haven’t cost the Tigers any momentum.
“It’s hard to do when you’re dealing with these byes,” Breaux said. “You create momentum and then you step back a little bit. But every time this team took the floor, they came back with a little bit more confidence.”
Until now, LSU was not focused on anything except the semifinal. The team focused on not looking ahead of themselves.
Now that the semifinal is in the past and they are one step closer to a national championship, the Tigers are ready to compete.
“My freshman year, we didn’t make Super Six at all,” Hambrick said. “That’s just been my goal for every team that I’ve been on. Once you get there you can think about winning and its really awesome.”