The LSU Tigers Gymnastics team captured the 2025 regular season SEC Championship after their big road win over Auburn on Friday. With the regular season over, they now head into the SEC Championship meet as the No. 1 seed, even with Oklahoma, who is the No. 1 overall team in the country by NQS average, now in the conference.
If you remember back to last year, the No. 3 Tigers won the SEC Championship for the fifth time in program history and first time since 2019. They posted a score of 198.075 and beat out the likes of No. 4 Florida (197.300), No. 6 Kentucky (197.600) and No. 7 Alabama (197.750) in New Orleans.
This year is a different beast.
As I just mentioned, the No. 1 team in the country, Oklahoma, are going to join the Tigers in Birmingham along with No. 3 Florida and No. 7 Missouri. Oklahoma and LSU are jostling for the No. 1 spot with the Tigers NQS average just .035 behind the Sooners. Florida isn't far off with an average .145 lower than LSU's and Missouri is just a few tenths off the Gators. This is one of the most competitive conferences in collegiate gymnastics history, and it should make for a wildly entertaining SEC Championship meet.
"This thing is going to be a slobberknocker," said LSU Head Coach Clark. "It's one, two and three in the country and then Missouri's inside of the top-eight. I don't know that there's ever been a SEC evening session that's been that stacked."
Oklahoma may be the No. 1 team in the country, but the Tigers actually beat the Sooners in the PMAC on Valentines day, and ever since then, they've slowly but surely closed the gap in NQS average between the two teams. There was a point where Oklahoma was three tenths clear of LSU, but now that gap has shrunk to less than half a tenth.
Clark thinks there are multiple teams that could win this meet, but it's going to come down to who can capture the momentum. Right now, LSU is probably the hottest team in the country, which should bode well for them heading into the meet.
"I think there are a lot of teams who are capable of winning it," said Clark. "It's going to come down to who gets hot. So much of it this time of year can be momentum driven, and when you catch momentum, you better try to hold onto it."
We got to speak with Haleigh Bryant and Aleah Finnegan on Monday afternoon to talk about the upcoming meet. Both of these gymnasts have competed for a SEC title every year they've been in Baton Rouge, but last year was the first time they were able to capture one.
Bryant talked about what she's learned through the years and the advice she's going to give to the team this week.
"Going into this meet, it's about not making the moment bigger than it needs to be," said Bryant. "That's something I've always said and something I always try to hold onto and let everybody know. It's known that we're going to go into Saturday competing for a SEC Championship, everybody knows that, but not making the making the moment bigger than it needs to be, doing our normal gymnastics and being in the right mindset (is important), because everybody's gymnastics is where it needs to be."
In recent years the SEC Championship has felt almost like the national championship. It's typically four of the top-eight or so teams in the country competing head-to-head, so this meet is not only going to crown a champion, but also give us a really good idea of where everyone stacks up heading into the postseason.
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