Up goes down and down goes up: Insights and takeaways from Auburn’s meet at Oklahoma
Torry shined to lift the vault lineup, and Boyd shined to lift the bars lineup — but the usually rock-solid floor and beam teams for Auburn struggled.
Auburn head coach Jeff Graba has said the team’s struggles have been like a game of Whac-A-Mole so far this season:
As soon as one issue gets hammered out, another issue unpredictably pops up.
Well: Game on in Norman.
Up was down and down was up in a Bizzaro World kind of meet for the Tigers on Friday at Oklahoma, with bars and vault doing well and beam and floor struggling. Auburn had been middling on bars and vault entering the meet, but showed some signs of encouragement in the first two rotations of the meet. Much more alarming, though, beam and floor both took a nose-dive: Auburn scored a season-low on floor and logged its second-lowest score of the season of beam.
Auburn lost an entire tenth from last week’s home meet against Alabama, scoring a 196.150 after scoring a 197.250 just a week earlier.
Bryn Bartman came up short to take a big step forward on her last tumbling pass to start Auburn’s floor routine, then Emma Wehry had to bail on a tumble in the No. 2 spot — and the floor rotation was doomed from there. On beam, Olivia Ahern came off the apparatus in the leadoff spot, then Olivia Greaves had to accept a 9.550 in the No. 2 spot, sending the beam team to a similar fate.
No. 1 Oklahoma won the meet with a 197.975. While a head-to-head win for top-ranked OU was to be expected, Auburn seemed to be headed back to Norman with more problems to fix — or at least different problems to fix — than it went there with.
Here are insights and takeaways from the meet as Auburn moves forward, starting with the bright spots that popped up early: