Moving back into the No. 2 spot of the national rankings, LSU gymnastics is setting up to take on No. 17 Auburn in the second of back-to-back home meets in the PMAC. Following Auburn, LSU is set to face No. 1 Oklahoma on the road.
The Tigers are coming off a rather underwhelming win against Penn State, with a final score of 197.525.
“I was not overly thrilled with our performance and not because you’re ever unhappy with a mid to high 197 score, but just based on the way we trained last week, I had a higher expectation of what I thought we would do,” head coach Jay Clark said. “We’ve still clearly got some growth to do if we want to be a complete team.”
While LSU usually isn’t one to dwell on scores, the meet against Penn State saw season lows on the beam and uneven bar events. Now competing against Auburn, the Tigers have the perfect opportunity to focus solely on fixing mistakes and competing with consistency throughout the night.
“More than anything else, I think we’re competing against ourselves right now,” Clark said. “We’ve yet to really put one together. We had that 198 at home, but we had an event that night that was not very good, so trying to get all four events on the same page is really where our focus is right now.”
The Tigers know they have what it takes to win meets and earn high scores, but their main concern is how to make those high numbers consistent across all four events in every meet.
Currently, LSU is ranked in the top 10 on all four events, more notably No. 3 on vault and No. 3 on bars. This would explain the team’s ability to score high in the early stages of a meet.
Against Penn State, however, this wasn’t exactly the case as it struggled to power through the middle portion of the meet. Looking to address the challenges it faced last Friday, LSU will focus on taking the competition one event at a time.
As a team that has the ability to maximize its lineups in multiple ways, making sure that those competing reset their mindset at the start of each rotation is what they need to hit each event with even amounts of strength.
Rather than searching for scores that add up for a win, the team is searching for performances that add up to the best overall performance and growth.
The Tigers have the chance to extend a 17-meet win streak inside the PMAC while Auburn will arrive in Baton Rouge on a four-week losing streak. Though they’ll be in front of a home crowd, these won’t exactly be the motivators for a competitive fight.
Knowing that a fellow powerhouse looms ahead, Friday’s meet against Auburn is also panning out to be the final chance for the Tigers to discard small mistakes that have added up in previous competition.
“It’s not about trying to keep a winning streak going; it’s about growth,” Clark said. “It’s about preparing and getting where we need to be for late in the season and continuing to try to find ourselves. It’s not that it’s been bad. It’s just about meeting the standard that we believe we ought to be able to meet.”
Friday’s meet against Auburn serves as both a checkpoint and a somewhat low-stakes opportunity to finetune the inconsistency seen against Penn State before facing a remaining schedule packed full of high-ranked heavy hitters.
Knowing self-improved consistency will be at the forefront of the competition, excitement stirs ahead of a late-night Tiger versus Tiger matchup at 8 p.m. CST inside the PMAC.
