After setting a home opener school record against Kentucky, No. 2 LSU gymnastics will travel to Columbia to take on No. 7 Missouri in a meet that serves as another major road test early this season.
Historically, neither team has been the most consistent for the Tigers versus Tigers matchup. The teams have traded wins with a 3-2 record over the past five regular season matchups, and if the pattern holds, the odds are in favor of Missouri going into the weekend.
However, the Baton Rouge team may break the pattern due to the versatility it has shown so far this season, with its strong, solid lineups.
“If we have the opportunity to make lineup changes early in the season, we want to get as many looks as we can reasonably without putting ourselves in a position where we are sacrificing our ability to score well or get a win,” head coach Jay Clark said. “We want to have some variety out there.”
This flexibility LSU seems to have given itself may be exactly what gives the purple and gold a competitive edge. An event that is particularly flexible for LSU is its uneven bars rotation, where the team has been excelling since the beginning of competition.
“[Alexis Jeffery] is ready on bars,” Clark said. “I’ve just been trying to get her a few more numbers. She’s been in our intrasquad since December. It’s tough competition on that event and we’re doing really well on bars right now, so to break into that is something that I anticipate her doing.”
It’s hard to miss the breakout that has become of the LSU bar rotation, but Mizzou follows closely behind. With comparative average scores that only share a deficit of 0.109 points, LSU will have to be on its A-game come Friday night.
Even more so, Missouri is headed into the weekend matchup on a two-week losing streak. On the hunt for its first win in the SEC, the team will most definitely look to capitalize on its home crowd advantage.
Although Mizzou is expected to lean on its home crowd, LSU has since emphasized that it cannot tie its success to outside environments.
“It’s easy to find a different external motivation than 13,000 screaming Tiger fans,” Clark said. “We’ve got to get to where we don’t rely and then are not dependent on anything external, no matter what. Whether it’s circumstance, atmosphere, number of fans, none of it should matter.”
With the road loss against Georgia looming over fan expectations, a road win against Mizzou will help to prove that LSU can excel outside the PMAC.
Though the team has never been the type to let past performances define them, the purple and gold Tigers still hope to validate Friday’s result against Kentucky with the growth they hope to show against Missouri.
“We really want to make sure that Friday night only means what it means if we can continue to improve and not create unforced errors and setbacks for ourselves,” Clark said.
Even with an inconsistent history between the two teams, LSU is heading into Friday not focused on winning through scores, but rather on growth. A win prioritized by personal consistency will be what truly establishes the Baton Rouge Tigers as top title contenders.
