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A fierce rivalry gets the TV spot it deserves.
The back-to-back SEC champion #2 LSU gymnastics team is back in action for the regular season road finale. The Tigers are coming off a 198.200 to top the fourth annual Purple & Gold Podium Challenge. Now they have to go into one of the hardest venues in which to win in all of college gymnastics: Exactech Arena at Stephen C. O’Connell Center, home of the #4 Florida Gators. The meet begins at 5:00 p.m. and will be broadcast on SECN. John Roethlisberger, Sam Peszek and Aly Raisman will be on the call, and Taylor Davis will be reporting from the floor. This is Florida’s senior night, by the way. Live stats can be found here.
LSU’s match-up history with Florida
LSU is 48-78 all-time against Florida and 8-29 in Gainesville. The last time the two teams met on the same floor was at the 2025 SEC Championship at which LSU defeated Florida 198.200-197.825. LSU hasn’t won at Florida since 1/12/2018, when the then-#1 Tigers beat the then-#7 Gators 197.250-197.125.
About #4 Florida
Florida finished 3rd at SECs in 2026 and 7th overall after getting upset in their national semifinal. The Gators lost seven NQS routines from the 2025 squad: Sloane Blakely floor (though she got injured roughly halfway through the season), Victoria Nguyen beam and floor, and Leanne Wong in the all-around. Gator seniors Ellie Lazzari and Bri Edwards graduated, and current junior Kaylee Bluffstone transferred to Auburn. The Gators retained senior Riley McCusker. From the portal, they added senior eMjae Frazier, a star all-arounder from Cal. They also brought in a class of four star freshmen including five-star recruits Jocelyn Sasson and Madelyn Dorbin.
Florida enters this meet 10-2 overall and 4-2 in the SEC. The Gators are coming off a 197.700 in a quad meet victory at Texas Woman’s in which they beat TWU, Arizona State and Fisk. In that meet, Florida set a new SEC record with a 49.800 beam rotation. They also had a 49.600 on bars and a 49.425 on floor. They needed a mere 49.175 on vault to get a 198, but they started with an 8.975 and a 9.575 before finishing with four 9.825s. That’s a great example of what this season’s been like for Florida. Florida is sitting on one 198 after eight meets for the first time since 2019. A lot of that is the result of issues with vault, save for the bars meltdown at Missouri.
Coming into 2026, Florida got a lot of hype for how many 10.0 SV vaults they showed off at Excite Night. The issue has been the quality of those vaults. Entering 2026, Florida hadn’t had a sub-49 vault rotation since the second meet of 2020. They’ve had three such vault rotations, something that they haven’t done since 2006. Every other event is steady. I’d normally do this later, but the Gators rank first on bars [49.546], second on beam [49.467], seventh on floor [49.392] and 12th on vault [49.179].
Florida has their superstars as always. Selena Harris-Miranda has been a rock for the Gators, and Kayla DiCello is almost back to the level she showed off as a freshman. Skye Blakely is the reigning SEC Specialist of the Week thanks to her beam 10 at TWU, the first of her career. Surprisingly, eMjae Frazier hasn’t scored as well as she did at Cal, but she could turn things up a notch tonight.
The Florida Gators are led by head coach Jenny Rowland in her 11th year. She is assisted by associate head coach Owen Field in his 11th year, associate head coach Adrian Burde in his 20th year and assistant coach Jeremy Miranda in his 19th year.
About #2 LSU
Kailin Chio won SEC Gymnast of the Week again, of course. The sophomore claimed her fifth award of the season on the back of a 39.800 all-around performance on February 27 against Alabama. It’s getting hard to find anything else to say about how she’s done this year, so I won’t try.
LSU is ranked second on vault [49.411], tied for second with Alabama on bars [49.461], third on beam [49.464] and first on floor [49.514]. LSU is the only team ranked in the top three on every event.
I refuse to predict lineups, but expect the usual stuff. I’ve been doing this for four years and there’s never been a meet where I knew who would be second on bars, so expect that to continue. Let’s ignore all of that and get to what matters: LSU needs to raise their floor again. It doesn’t matter how they get scored, it matters that they have a clean meet. If they do that, everything will be just fine heading into senior night Friday.
On the NQS front, Florida has a lot more control than LSU. Alabama and Oklahoma are competing their second meet in three days today, and Alabama put up a season-low 197.200 on Friday. That means no matter what Bama does, Florida jumps them with a 198.050+. As for LSU, they can’t drop below #2 but could jump ahead of Oklahoma for the top spot if OU has a bad meet. If OU goes 197.550+, that’s a moot point.
This meet always brings out the best in each team. It should be a fun one to take in as the extra sunshine creeps in through your windows.
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