It started ugly. LSU’s very first gymnast on the very first rotation, Christina Desiderio, fell off the beam. Bridget Dean helped pick her up from the next slot, but she only scored a 9.775. Five minutes into the meet, LSU was already in crisis.
The Tigers would rally for the rest of the rotation, but those big scores were not coming. It wasn’t until Sarah Finnegan, the team’s steady senior leader, showed up in the anchor spot and slammed down a confident 9.9375 for the team’s first 9.90+ score of the day. More importantly, LSU was able to salvage that early struggle and score a 49.