LSU Gymnastics hosted Alabama Friday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center at 8:30 pm. LSU is ranked No. 2 while Alabama is No. 3. While both teams want to hold their position in the top three gymnastics teams, this was a very competitive match as the scores were neck and neck.
Following their loss to No. 1 Oklahoma last week, the Tigers stuck a win against the Crimson Tide with an ending score of 197.975 vs. Alabama’s 197.600. Though LSU stayed in the lead for the entire meet, there were multiple low scoring performances shown.
Beginning the meet with Lexi Zeiss on vault, she scored a 9.875, getting the Tigers off to a strong start, followed by a 9.900 by Konnor McClain. All besides one score on the vault tonight was above 9.8.
Alabama also showed out tonight during their first rotation on the uneven bars, having extremely high scores. For the Crimson Tide, Ryan Fuller scoring a 9.900 and Chloe LaCoursiere scoring a 9.950, were the highest scorers.
Moving to 2nd rotation, for LSU, Ashley Cowan scoring a 9.925, Madison Ulrich and Konnor McClain with a 9.900. On vault, Alabama finished with consistent scores, right under LSU. The top scorers for Alabama vault were Jordyn Paradise and Azaraya Ra-Akbar with 9.900.
Scores like this is how LSU and Alabama kept the meet score close.
During the 3rd rotation, Amari Drayton, had quite the fall during her beam routine. The gymnast’s score was greatly impacted because of this. Drayton ended with a drastic 9.175 on beam pushing LSU behind.
Konnor McClain had a personal best on beam landing a 9.975. Shortly after, Kailin Chio came through for the Tigers and earned her sixth perfect 10 in her career in her beam routine. This was significant for Chio and the rest of her team as it brought them back in the match.
The 4th rotation was an outstanding scoring round for both teams. The LSU Tigers had all gymnasts scoring a 9.9 or above during their floor routines. The lineup for this rotation was Emily Innes, Nina Ballou, Kylie Coen, Amari Drayton, Kailin Chio, and Lexi Zeiss.
Alabama finished on the beam, having all scores above a 9.8. Top scorers to end the meet for the Crimson Tide were Ryan Fuller with a 9.900 and Kylee Kvamme sticking a 9.950.
LSU took all events home tonight for the win. The Tigers will be at the Raising Cane’s River Center on Sunday, March 1 at 3 p.m. for the Podium Challenge, where they will compete against Alabama again, along with Arizona, and North Carolina.
