Gator Gymnastics Upset in Tiger Town

The Florida gymnastics team was beaten by the LSU Tigers Sunday in Baton Rouge.  The victory by LSU gives them the first ever SEC regular season championship.  Had Florida beaten LSU, they would have shared the title.  The Gators will now prepare for their last home meet of the season this Friday against West Virginia where the Gators will say goodbye to one senior during the meet, Claire Boyce.

Warm-up is complete.

Now it is time for No. 3⃣ #Gators & No. 2⃣ LSU to compete!

Watch on @SECNetwork at 3:30pmET.#GoGators pic.twitter.com/zkCUMswFMb

— Gators Gymnastics (@GatorsGym) March 5, 2017

VAULT: PERFECT 10

The Gators started the first half of the meet on the bars and vault. On bars, the Gators had one of their worst rotations of the season, starting off the meet weakly. Alex McMurtry, who normally scores close to a 9.9 on bars had some uncharacteristic mistakes and scored a 9.45. The Gators finished off the first rotation a full point behind LSU and needed to step up big time on vault, and that’s just what they did. McMurtry bounced back in a big way from her bars routine, scoring the second perfect 10 of her career on vault. This brought the Gators within striking distance of LSU and it was anyone’s meet at this point with U holding a 99.05-98.30 lead.

https://twitter.com/FloridaGators/status/838496119650942976

SECOND HALF – TIGERS PULL AWAY

Florida started off the second half of the meet on floor and got a pretty slow start. Normally, the entire floor rotation that consists of Grace McLaughlin, Rachel Gowey, Rachel Slocum, Amelia Hundley, Alex McMurtry and Alicia Boren, score above a 9.8. However, that was not the case tonight. The first three floor routines scored below the normal 9.8, putting the Gators in a hole that they could not dig themselves out of. Hundley, McMurtry and Boren had decent scores, but it was not until Alicia Boren’s routine that above a 9.9 was recorded. The Gators finished off the meet on bars and lost to the Tigers with a final score of 196.60.