This was a party from start to finish
Crown protected!
The defending NCAA champion LSU gymnastics team defended their SEC title Saturday in dominant fashion. For the second consecutive year, the Tigers posted the only 198 of the SEC championship, finishing with a second consecutive 198.200. They beat Oklahoma’s 197.925, Florida’s 197.825, Missouri’s 197.400, Alabama’s 197.100, Kentucky’s 196.775, and Auburn and Georgia’s 195.950s. This is LSU’s sixth SEC gymnastics championship and fifth since 2017.
Kailin Chio officially wins SEC Freshman of the Year
As expected, Kailin Chio won SEC Freshman of the Year. Her dominant season is one that’ll be hard to top thanks to her unmatched execution across all four events and the fact that there were only a handful of other freshman all-arounders. Kailin joins April Burkholder, Kiya Johnson and Haleigh Bryant as the fourth LSU Tiger gymnast to win the award since it was first given in 1991.
This was the first postseason meet of the season. Regular season meet recaps focused on how LSU did, but postseason recaps are going to be more about how LSU got the result they did. Instead of routine-by-routine breakdowns, I’ll be focusing on the rotation as a whole for all four teams. Yes, this is so I can get these done quickly, especially for regionals. If you want to watch the whole meet, here’s the link.
LSU UB 49.600, Oklahoma VT 49.425, Florida FX 49.375, Missouri BB 49.125
LSU started the meet off very strong. The scores were a bit loose, but the gymnastics was anything but. From top to bottom, this was a solid rotation. Lexi Zeiss led it off strong with a 9.875 followed by an Ashley Cowan 9.900 and 9.950s from Kailin Chio and Aleah Finnegan, the latter of which set a new career high thanks to a stuck landing. Neither Konnor McClain nor Haleigh Bryant could find sticks and put up 9.900s. It was a solid start to the meet.
As this was happening, Oklahoma was having a surprisingly off vault rotation in which they weren’t sticking very much. Florida looked okay on floor and Missouri did better than the score indicated. This rotation showed how things were going to be on the judging end: very tight on beam, average on floor, slightly looser on vault and loosest of all on bars. This mattered a ton as the meet moved on.
LSU BB 49.450, Oklahoma UB 49.550, Florida VT 49.500, Mizzou FX 49.600 (LSU in 1st)
LSU drilled beam with some very good routines up and down the lineup. This was also the only event on which LSU took home individual SEC titles. The front half of the lineup produced three straight 9.850s. Konnor came in and hit her routine for a tight 9.900, and then Haleigh and Aleah got 9.925s to take home SEC titles alongside Missouri’s Helen Hu and Oklahoma’s Faith Torrez. Surprisingly, this was Aleah’s first individual SEC title win, but it was certainly deserving of the honor. This was a poised performance from the Tigers in a pressure-packed situation, and it was great to see LSU get through the anxiety events with such great scores.
Elsewhere, everyone else found their groove. Missouri always has a groove going on floor, but they put up the second best score of the night. Florida hit vault including a Selena Harris-Miranda literally perfect 10, and Oklahoma got through bars strongly. It was a tight meet that tightened up thanks to some history in the third rotation.
LSU FX 49.625, Florida UB 49.850, Oklahoma UB 49.475, Mizzou VT 49.100 (LSU in 2nd by .050)
LSU kept things going strong on floor. Kylie Coen’s 9.875 led things off well before Sierra Ballard had an uncharacteristic 9.775 thanks to a crunchy DLO. Then the rest of the lineup knocked it out of the park with three 9.950s and a 9.900. Taylor Davis mentioned that Aleah took out one step from each of her passes on floor, a rare move since it forces her to take off from a different foot on each pass. It seems to be working very well, though. It was the same strong LSU floor rotation that we’ve come to expect.
Missouri had a tough vault rotation and Oklahoma had a fall on beam, but the story of this rotation was Florida. They set a new NCAA record for the best bars rotation score in NCAA history with their 49.850 (tied for eighth best rotation score on any event ever). They dropped a 9.900. They had three 9.950s and two 10s, one from Leanne Wong and the other from Riley McCusker in a total shocker. This propelled the Gators into the lead entering the final rotation. There was just one problem for Florida: they chose to start on floor and had to end on beam, the event with the tightest judging. This, alongside general execution differences, led LSU to the title.
LSU VT 49.525, Oklahoma FX 49.475, Florida BB 49.100, Mizzou UB 49.575 (LSU wins)
LSU did not stick a single vault, but that wasn’t a big issue. The main thing that helped them was that they didn’t underrotate any of their vaults. Aleah’s done that in the past and it’s led to 9.850s, but she stepped forward and got a 9.900. Lexi still has form issues she needs to work on, but she came close to sticking her vault for the second straight week. Amari’s vault got overscored pretty badly, but it wasn’t going to count anyway.
Missouri killed it on bars with their second best bars rotation ever. Mara Titarsolej capped it off with a 10 to repeat as a bars champion. Oklahoma overtook Florida to finish in second thanks in part to one of the most heinous judging errors of the night. Three judges gave Addison Fatta a 10.0 SV, but her second pass didn’t get around enough to earn what was required. Faith Torrez finished the meet with a 10.0 to win Oklahoma its first individual SEC gymnastics championship. As for Florida, they buckled a bit. Florida came in as the only team in this session without any podium experience during the season, and that showed on beam. They looked nervous and made mistakes that judges were hammering all night. Leanne Wong balked during her leap series and Selena Harris-Miranda hopped back on her dismount, and that gave Haleigh Bryant the chance to clinch LSU’s fourth straight win over Florida. Her 9.950 sealed the title for the Tigers and sealed her second consecutive SEC all-around title over the four major favorites. In total, 29 LSU gymnasts have combined for 56 individual SEC titles.
Overall thoughts
First of all, Florida should’ve been second, not Oklahoma. Second, Missouri deserves credit for how good they looked overall. They weren’t trying to push themselves too much to prove they belonged in the evening session. They went out and had the same mindset as usual, and it paid off in droves on bars and floor.
As for LSU, they won this thing by being the best team out there. It wasn’t a stick-fest, but it was very clean in the areas that other teams weren’t. Those were phenomenal handstands, fantastic acro series, great leap series on floor and good form in vault flights. The most important part was the mindset. I knew they were probably going to win this when they were all dancing and having fun behind Jay while he was getting interviewed. As the defending champs going up against the remaining two teams in the top three, they could’ve been tight and tried to push too much. That’s what Oklahoma and Florida did.
The SEC didn’t have every team compete at the championship meet, so they changed how people earned All-SEC honors to being based on pre-SEC Championships NQS instead of being based on placement in each session. Four LSU gymnasts combined for nine All-SEC team: Haleigh Bryant (VT, FX), Aleah Finnegan (VT, BB, AA), Konnor McClain (UB) and Kailin Chio (VT, BB, AA), who also made the SEC All-Freshman team. Kailin is the 50th gymnast in LSU history to be a member of the All-SEC team. With these nine awards, LSU has combined for 116 All-SEC honors.
The next stop is the University Park Regional (or Penn State Regional, I refuse to call it the Pennsylvania Regional since it’s not being hosted at the Palestra) as the top overall seed in the NCAA tournament. There are eight other teams and plenty of individual qualifiers competing from April 2-5 in the middle of Pennsylvania, and on Tuesday, it’ll be time for the third annual installment of Better Know a Regional, my favorite tradition.