SEC Tournament Time for Gym Dogs

The Women’s Gymnastic regular season is over, and we have reached the SEC Championships. Your UGA Gym Dogs come into the tournament as the #3 seed, behind LSU and Florida, but above Alabama. Just being seeded higher than ‘Bama gives many a reason to call the season a success.

The season record for Georgia is 10-4, with home wins over Ohio State, Iowa State, Arkansas, Kentucky and Utah (!!). The lone blemish at Stegeman was against Alabama. Road victories against Missouri and Florida are measured against road losses to Oklahoma (#1), Auburn (#13), and LSU (#3). The lone neutral site meet was a victory over Arkansas, Minnesota (#10) and Michigan State. The Gym Dogs finish with a National Qualifying Score (NQS - replacing the decades old RQS) of 197.125. That is good for #8 in the country.

But it ain’t over yet. The SEC tournament is a one day event held in New Orleans at the Superdome Smoothie King Center. With 8 teams competing, the match is broken up into an afternoon session and an evening session. The highest four seeds (UGA, UF, LSU, UK) compete in the evening session - the winner of this likely having the highest meet score thus more likely to grab the hardware. The afternoon session includes Alabama (snark), Auburn, Missouri, and Arkansas. These afternoon participants will have a much harder road to have a chance at the conference title.

The afternoon session starts at 3:00 pm CT (4:00 pm ET) Saturday, March 23, and is considered the breadsticks, while the evening session is the meat and potatoes portion, and which begins at 7:00 pm CT (8:00 pm ET). Both sessions will be broadcast on the SEC Network, with Bart Conner and Kathy Johnson Clarke on the mic. Set your recording devices accordingly.

For those interested, Georgia will start with Beam, then Floor, Vault, and finish on the Uneven Bars. This is a departure from our regular home rotation of Vault, Bars, Beam, Floor, so we’ll have to see what Coach Courtney Kupets Carter will do with her lineup.

And just because Georgia has 16 SEC titles, more than any other school, doesn’t mean that there is pressure. Or that the Gym Dogs last captured the SEC in 2008, before going on to win the National Championship for the 10th time. No pressure at all. And not that anyone is counting or anything.

So unless you have plans to spend hours researching where TruTV is on your television provider, flip it on over to the SEC Network and let’s cheer on our Gym Dogs. It ain’t hard, because it’s always...

GO ‘DAWGS!!!