It’s time to face the postseason.
The back-to-back SEC champion #2 LSU gymnastics team has made it to the postseason with their eyes on a second threepeat. The Tigers are looking for a strong score in the greatest quad meet in NCAA history against #1 Oklahoma, #3 Florida and #4 Alabama in the night session of the SEC Championship in Tulsa. LSU is in search of their seventh ever title and wouldn’t mind seeing a few gymnasts earn SEC titles of their own. The meet begins at 7:00 on SECN with John Roethlisberger, Aly Raisman and Sam Peszek on the call and Taylor Davis performing floorside duties. Live stats can be found here.
Visit freshyourfeel.org for more information.
Evening session teams’ history at SECs since 2019
Oklahoma is making their second appearance at the SEC Championship after finishing as runners-up in 2025. LSU’s last six finishes were, in order from 2019-25, #1, #2, #5, #3, #1, and #1. Florida’s last six finishes were #2, #3, #1, #1, #4, and #3. Alabama’s last six finishes were #3, #1, #2, #2, #2, and #5.
A brief look at the afternoon session
At 2:00, the five lowest ranked teams in the SEC will face off in the afternoon session. The SEC decided that every team should get in after one year of leaving out the worst team, but this means that the session will force one team to sit out during each rotation. The bye will come between vault and bars. Live scores for the afternoon session can be found here.
#8 Arkansas will start their meet on bars. The Hogs haven’t been as consistent as they’ve wanted to be this season, but they’re eight spots up from 2025, the year they missed this championship entirely. Their goal is to find the gear they need for a push back to nationals, and maybe they can rack up an SEC title from Joscelyn Roberson for the first time.
#6 Georgia will start on the bye. As if last year wasn’t good enough, this year has been even better for the GymDogs. There has been one unfortunate development: Lily Smith broke her foot before the Kentucky meet and will miss the rest of the season. Despite that, Georgia got their first win in Tuscaloosa since 2006 without her, and they had their first regular season 198 in 19 years the week before that. They are looking to keep their momentum going and return to nationals for the first time since 2019.
#9 Missouri will start on bars. Mizzou’s NQS is just 0.001 lower than Arkansas’, but the Tigers have been the more consistent team overall as noted by their higher average. That consistency is what’s kept this team in the top 10. In my five years of watching this sport closely, I’ve always seen this team as the tortoise to bigger teams’ hares. They won’t always put up a massive score, but they’ll put up a competitive score that can sneak ahead of better teams who have more mistakes. That’s certainly possible today.
#16 Auburn will start on beam. Auburn finished the SEC regular season 0-8. They are still having their issues on bars, and floor hasn’t been as good as they’ve needed it to be. They tend to score in the upper 196 range as a result with a high in the low 197s. There are a lot of questions about what happened to the team this year, but those can be quieted with a solid performance tonight that locks them into the seeded spots.
#19 Kentucky will start on floor. The Wildcats had a very rough start to the season with two 194s and a 195, but they haven’t dipped below 196.675 in their last six meets. The beam issues from the early part of the season went away as the Cats haven’t done worse than 49.200 on the event in the last six meets. They’re a solid team with a high chance of pulling a regional semifinal upset. Unrelated to all of that, I find it hilarious that they’re going to make regionals despite finishing the regular season 1-10-1
Let’s jump into the teams sharing the floor with LSU. All event rankings are relative to the rest of the SEC.
#4 Alabama (starts on floor)
Alabama is ranked #5 on vault [49.273], #2 on bars [49.498], #7 on beam [49.225] and #2 on floor [49.515].
I have no idea what this team is going to do. Alabama was a very solid and stable team for the majority of this season with the issue being that they couldn’t find that next level to hit high 197s and 198s. After the Podium Challenge, Alabama set two season lows in three days with a 197.200 and a 197.125, and they finished the regular season with a 197.425 in a home loss to Georgia. The Tide are famous for outdoing expectations at SECs, though. They finished third after starting in the afternoon session in 2019, they won the 2021 title out of nowhere, they finished second in 2024 despite being basically out of title contention in the final rotation, and they finished fifth in 2025 after entering as the #8 seed. This needs to be a solid meet for Alabama, because what awaits at regionals is a massive test.
#3 Florida (starts on beam)
Florida is ranked #6 on vault [49.234], #1 on bars [49.569], #1 on beam [49.538] and #5 on floor [49.438].
Well then, I guess someone decided to wake up. The Gators have been on a tear the past two weeks with back-to-back national season-high scores of 198.450 and 198.575, though that second score was a bit higher than it should’ve been. Whether that translates to this meet is impossible to know until it happens. In the last two years, Florida’s had a rough time at SECs. Last year, they finished third despite outdoing Oklahoma and getting multiple 10s. In 2024, they finished fourth after a bad start on beam. If they go 198.600, I won’t be incredibly surprised because they’re capable of being the best team in the country. All of that talent is too good to be getting mid-197s throughout the year.
Also, just a point because I see it every year and it irks me: Florida is very good in the postseason, and postseason scoring isn’t going to stop that. In 2022, Florida set the NCAA record for highest score in tournament history with a 198.775 at the Auburn Regional Final with an insane meet. Coming into 2026, I thought Florida had the highest ceiling in the country, and recent meets have shown off what that looks like. What kills the Gators is their mindset. If they’re even slightly off, it can snowball.
#1 Oklahoma (starts on vault)
Oklahoma is ranked #1 on vault [49.563], #4 on bars [49.428], #2 on beam [49.513] and #4 on floor [49.478].
Breaking news, the Sooners still kick your ass. Once again, the best team in the country is the Oklahoma Sooners, a team that’s built on great execution and technique. One look at their rankings tells an interesting story, though. This team is consistent, but they aren’t as automatic as in years past. The 2023 and 2024 teams are the best teams I’ve ever seen since I started following this sport in 2022, and those teams were far more consistent with their landings than this one. Oklahoma’s bars team has been especially inconsistent with their landings compared to years past, and in a meet like this, it could be a problem.
Oklahoma has the third highest ceiling of any team in the country behind Florida and LSU. Their floor is extremely high, though, and that’s why they do so well. An okay meet for Oklahoma is going to look like a 197.700-197.900. They operate on such a high level, and that’s what makes them almost unbeatable. Almost unbeatable is not entirely unbeatable, though, and if they’re only doing okay, they won’t get their first SEC tournament title.
#2 LSU (starts on bars)
Kailin Chio is the final SEC Specialist of the Week of 2026. Her perfect 30 marked the first of its kind in NCAA history, and with the SEC defining a specialist as anyone who doesn’t do the all-around, she was a lock for this award. This is Kailin’s first ever Specialist of the Week award, and she’s now won all three kinds of SEC weekly awards in her career.
LSU is ranked #2 on vault [49.439], #3 on bars [49.442], #3 on beam [49.486] and #1 on floor [49.544].
“To be perfectly honest, no amount of analysis is going to matter when it comes to this championship because the top three teams are about as equally likely as each other to take home the title. It’s a waiting game to see who hits up to their potential, and that’s what makes this so fun. This is an SEC title with the top three teams in the nation facing off. There is no conference outside the MAC, a chaotic masterpiece of a championship, with this many teams with a legitimate chance at a title. The best way for me to push against some of my anxiety is to enjoy what should be one of the greatest SEC championships in any sport ever and let what happens happen.” That’s what I said in last year’s preview, and now it’s the top four teams in the nation facing off.
For LSU, their normal is enough to succeed. This team is unstoppable when it catches fire, but that’s been a challenge in 2026. Several of LSU’s high scores came when incredible rotations buoyed mediocre rotations. There’s a chance the top three teams in this meet finish above 198, so normal may not be enough to win. What matters most is putting together a solid meet one more time before regionals. Don’t worry about the final result if LSU manages to do that because they have no control over the other three juggernauts on the floor.
For final rankings heading into regionals, there’s a slight chance LSU and Oklahoma swap spots. If Oklahoma scores a 197.900 or lower, LSU would pass them with any score that’s at least 0.425 higher. A 197.925+ makes it impossible for LSU to move their NQS higher than Oklahoma’s. LSU cannot drop below their current ranking. Florida is locked into the #3 overall seed regardless of score tonight. Alabama is not locked into their final seed, but it won’t matter too much. #5 UCLA has full control of whether Bama is the #4 overall seed or the #5 overall seed. If UCLA can’t get a 197.375, they’re stuck at their current spot, and if they get a 198.125+, they move up to the #4 spot no matter what.
This should be a fantastic meet, maybe the best quad meet in history. Thankfully, LSU isn’t playing in any major sports during this meet, so y’all have no excuse to be watching anything else. It’s this kind of pressure that makes people want to come to LSU.