The LSU Tigers Gymnastics team are halfway through their 2025 season already. It feels like opening night was just a couple weeks ago, but here we are six weeks into the season.

As it stands right now, the Tigers are the second-best team in the country based on average score (197.400), behind only the Oklahoma Sooners (197.746), who they will welcome to town on Friday for the first time as SEC opponents. These two met earlier in the year in the Sprouts Farmers Market Collegiate Quad with OU finishing first and LSU finishing second, but they'll go directly head-to-head on Friday night in the Pete Maravich Assembly Center.

This will be just the second time in Jay Clark's 14-year tenure at LSU (five years as head coach, nine as an assistant) that the Tigers will participate in a one-two matchup. The first of which came in 2021 when the No. 1 Florida Gators came to town and knocked off the No. 2 LSU Tigers, 198.150-198.050 in Clark's first season as head coach.

While from the outside this meet is going to get a whole lot of attention from fans around the country, Clark says he's not all that intrigued with the headlines, but he acknowledges that it's going to be great for the fans and the sport.

"It's rare you get a number one versus number two matchup in any sport in the regular season like this," said Clark. "I acknowledge those things and it's super fun for the fans, and if I was sitting in your chair right now, I'd be more intrigued by that than I am in my own position. We certainly love it for our fans, and I love the fact that they're going to get to come here Friday night and see what are now the best two teams in the country."

In most sports, the game-to-game game plan changes based on your opponents. You change what you do on offense or defense based on your opponents tendencies, but gymnastics is a sport where you have no control over how the other team will perform, which is why LSU superstar, Haleigh Bryant, said this week of preparation is just like any other. Just because Oklahoma is coming to town doesn't mean anything will change for them.

"I don't think our preparation is going to change at all," said Bryant. "We're just going to treat it like another competition because, just like Jay (Clark) always says, every Friday night we're competing against everybody else in the country. Even though the number one team in the country is coming in here, we're going to treat it the exact same and do our normal gymnastics we do every single day because our normal is enough."

Clark echoed Bryant's statement, adding that in ways, they're always competing against Oklahoma. Rankings are determined by average score and not record, so while you're always going head-to-head with someone, you're also always fighting against everyone else.

"For us, we talk every week about the fact that we're competing against what everybody else does," said Clark. "In ways we compete against Oklahoma every week. That's the way our sport is because of the fact that our scoring dictates so much...There's no defense. There's not someway we're going to get up emotionally for this that's going to give us an advantage over anybody, it's just not how it works in our sport. We have to stay 100% focused on us and what we do. It has to remain that way, and if it doesn't it's a trap, and we will fail."

That doesn't mean they don't want to win, though. These are the defending national champions. They want to win every single meet and win it by a lot, but they know that it's not about the team on the other side of the floor, you just have to worry about yourself and perform as good as you can, because you can't do anything to change how the other team is performing.

"You certainly want to win," said Clark. "I'm not saying we don't want to win, we want to win everything. But I also know that, if you make it about another team, you're making a huge mistake."

Right now, everyone in the college gymnastics world wants to be Oklahoma. They're the "golden standard" when it comes to collegiate gymnastics, having won five of the last eight national titles. Clark spoke about Oklahoma and their coaching staff and how they're able to be so good year-in and year-out.

"That coaching staff has been together for 20 years now and they've got their system," said Clark. "They're a well oiled machine and that sort of consistency comes with time. Continuity is huge in our sport in terms of coaching staffs because the whole sport is based on trust and communication level you have with your athletes. I think they're the gold standard, they've figured it out. They are the team that, year over year, is Chick-fil-a. They're good no matter where they go."

This matchup is arguably the biggest regular season matchup for LSU Gymnastics ever. They, the defending national champions, host the No. 1 team in the country on Friday night. For comparison, this is like No. 2 LSU hosting No. 1 Alabama the year after winning the national title in football. It's a big deal.

The PMAC will be packed and it should be a wildly entertaining meet, so make sure you tune in to watch your Tigers try to upset the No. 1 team in the nation.

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