Alabama
Best Floor Rotation in Nation Propels No. 3 Alabama to Dominant Win Over Oregon State
TUSCALOOSA, Ala.— No team in the country has put together a better floor rotation than Alabama did during Friday night’s win over Oregon State inside Coleman Coliseum.
Behind a season high (and nationa’s best) 49.675 on the floor exercise, No. 3 Alabama beat No. 22 Oregon State 197.450-195.825.
Five of the Crimson Tide’s six floor routines scored a 9.925 or higher capped by back-to-backs 9.95s from Jamison Sears and Gabby Gladieux in the final two routines of the night. It marked the third straight week that at least one judge gave Gladieux a 10 on floor.
“I think we still have a lot of potential,” Gladieux said after the meet. “There’s still a lot of areas for us to grow, but I think what makes Jamison and I’s job so easy is the trust we have in the first half ot he lineup. They set us up perfectly tonight. There was really no pressure on our end. We just went in, had fun and did our job.”
In her routine of the season, senior Rachel Rybicki scored a 9.925 in the third spot after Chloe LaCoursiere and Azaraya Ra-Akbar started the rotation with the same score. Alabama’s depth on floor gives the Tide the potential to consistently be one of the highest-scoring teams in the nation on the apparatus.
Alabama continued its strong work on the uneven bars with its second-highest bars score of the season with a 49.475. Junior Chloe LaCoursiere came into the meet as the top-rated bars worker in the country and recorded her fourth straight score of the season higher than a 9.925 on the event with a 9.95 Friday night against Oregon State.
The vault and balance beam routines are both ones Alabama will want to leave in the past. There weren’t any major mistakes, but the rotations resulted in the Crimson Tide’s two lowest rotation scores of the season through four meets with a 49.125 on vault and 49.175 on the balance beam. Alabama did not stick any landings on vault, but head coach Ashley Johnston was still pleased with what her team learned on the event.
“I’m actually really excited about on through four on that lineup,” Johnston said of the vault rotation. “I thought Jasmine, Jordyn, Jamison and Gabby all had their best vaults tonight and just continuing to find what it is that helps them settle in to landings is going to be everything. I think because they all did, really a great job, I think Kylee and Aza, they like, really tried to go for the stick. And they over-tried on the stick, but they did big vaults.”
LaCoursiere’s beam routine lead to extended conversations between the judges and between the Alabama coaches and the judges. One of the judges gave LaCoursiere’s routine a starting value of 9.8 while the other gave it a 10.0 starting value. Her final score ended up being a 9.725 on the event, and head coach Ashley Johnston spent the entire transition period between the third and fourth rotation conferring with the head judge.
Johnston said it was the longest inquiry of her career. LaCoursiere’s connection series was questioned by one of the judges. The Alabama coaches originally did a routine inquiry with a video, which they lost. Then, they did a video review at the end of the competition and ultimately won the inquiry process to get LaCoursiere the proper start value.
“It was a long-fought battle,” Johnston said. “Very thankful for Ross Thompson who is ultra prepared for all situations, and he had his book of every single rule that has ever existed, so we were armed and ready to bring all the information forward to ultimately make the right decision.”
Despite not having its best meet on vault and beam, the meet was never in doubt for the Crimson Tide. Alabama held a sizable lead over Oregon State after each rotation and continued to build on the lead. The Beavers only scored above a 49 on one event: balance beam.
Alabama has now started the season with four straight scores in the 197 range and will likely stay in the top-five nationally after this meet.
Up next for the Crimson Tide is a road meet against the defending national champion and the No. 1 Oklahoma Sooners next Friday.
“Depth is really going to be the determiner of how far we go, and so having the seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th person who is pushing everybody in the lineup, continuing to find their edge, is going to be a really important focus point for us right now,” Johnston said. “I think we did a good job of that tonight, but that’s absolutely a priority as we go into this next month because we’ve got a gauntlet of a season coming up.”
Read more on BamaCentral:
Welcome to BamaCentral’s “Just a Minute,” a video series featuring Alabama Crimson Tide on SI’s beat writers. Multiple times per week, the writers will group up or film solo to provide their take on a topic concerning the Crimson Tide or the landscape of college sports.
Watch the above video as BamaCentral baseball beat reporter Theodore Fernandez reflects on the first two months of Alabama baseball’s season and explains why the team has left much to be desired despite success on the field.
At face value, this has been a successful campaign for Alabama baseball. Entering the final four weeks of the regular season, a Crimson Tide team that was projected to finish No. 13 in the SEC is 9-9 in conference play, and just one game out of fourth place. The first sweep of Auburn in more than a decade, the Frisco Classic title, and a road series win over Oklahoma are big-time results that speak to the potential Alabama clearly possesses.
But it continues to appear increasingly likely that this team may not realize that potential.
There are issues up and down the roster. The bulk of the attention has been on Justin Lebron’s struggles. His career-high in errors and underwhelming offensive numbers have led to his draft stock beginning to fall, and it led to him even being experimentally moved out of the two-hole for a game against Arkansas.
Players like Luke Vaughn and Jason Torres have struggled, and there is still a significant amount of regular roster experimentation occurring on a week-to-week basis. Will Plattner, Justin Osterhouse, Chase Kroberger, Andrew Purdy and Peyton Steele are all among the players who have started games over the past two weekends and still appear to have undefined roles.
The biggest question remains the bullpen, as it is nearly impossible to predict what it will provide on any given day. There was a two-weekend stretch where it gave up just five earned runs over 22.1 combined innings against Auburn and Oklahoma, willing Alabama to wins in games where the bats did not show up. Then there have been the lows: implosions against Arkansas and Texas that cast serious doubt on the unit’s ability to show up in big moments.
In all of those areas where the team has struggled, there is hope of a turnaround. There are the bullpen’s aforementioned elite stretches. There are the web-gem plays in short by Lebron, that will leave him with one of the most impressive defensive highlight reels of any player in the nation. There’s Torres responding to a 1-for-12 weekend against the Razorbacks with a two-hit game where he drove in one of Alabama’s two runs to avoid a sweep against Texas last Sunday.
In a sport defined by randomness, where the thinnest of margins can mean the difference between going home in a regional or making a run to Omaha, we simply have no way of knowing where Alabama will land.
Would we really expect it any other way?
That’s baseball.
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A “joyful” 10-year-old Alabama girl was found dead soon after being reported missing — with another juvenile charged with her murder.
Katheryn Bigbee, 10, was reported missing just before 11 p.m. Friday, when police were called to an undisclosed address in Calhoun County, AL.com reported.
“Officers responded immediately to the residence,” Piedmont Police Chief Nathan Johnson said in a statement. “They tragically discovered a deceased juvenile inside the home.”
It remains unclear where the house was, or whether it was the young girl’s family home — but another juvenile was soon taken into custody and hit with murder charges.
Their identity and connection to Bigbee have not been disclosed due to their age.
Bigbee’s cause of death also remains unclear, with police saying the investigation was still ongoing.
“Our family has been torn to pieces, and we have lost the most amazing, sweetest little girl,” relative Blake Trammel wrote on Facebook.
“She was a light in any room she walked into. I cannot express the pain, guilt, and emptiness that has come from all of this. We don’t have answers, only more questions,” he added.
The girl’s school also recalled her as a beloved member of its community.
“Our entire Piedmont Elementary School family is grieving as we remember a sweet little girl who brought smiles, kindness, and a bright light to our halls each day,” the school said in a statement.
“Katheryn had a joyful, spunky personality that made her truly special,” the school said. “She was an enthusiastic reader and will be remembered for the happiness she shared so freely.”
“She will always be a part of our school family, and her memory will live on in the hearts of her classmates, teachers, and all who knew and loved her.”
Alabama AHSAA softball key dates and top teams approaching the 2026 playoffs originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
Alabama’s AHSAA softball playoffs are just around the corner with three of the state’s top teams ranked in the national Top 15.
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The No. 5 Orange Beach [AL] Makos, No. 10 Thompson [Alabaster, AL] Warriors, and No. 15 Wetumpka [AL] Indians are all ranked in the most recent edition of the MaxPreps Top 50 with the start of Alabama’s postseason less than two weeks away.
Orange Beach was previously ranked No. 1 before losing to the South Warren [Bowling Green, KY] Spartans last week. Both teams were undefeated going into the contest, and the Barbers Hill [Mt. Belvieu, TX] Eagles took the Makos’ place at the top of the rankings following the loss.
WATCH: ALABAMA AHSAA SOFTBALL ON THE NFHS NETWORK
Key dates for the Alabama AHSAA softball playoffs
|
DATE |
PLAYOFF DEADLINES |
|
5/1-5/26 |
Area Tournaments |
|
5/11-14/26 |
Regional Tournaments |
|
5/18-22/26 |
State Tournaments |
National Top 50 contenders by classification
Alabama’s three nationally-ranked teams all compete in different classifications.
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Class 7A
The Thompson Warriors are 34-1-2, and they compete in the AHSAA’s top-level Class 7A ranks. The team’s only loss is to the No. 15 Wetumpka Indians in a 3-2 setback on April 3.
Class 6A
Wetumpka is 34-5, and as noted above, they are the only team to beat Thompson so far.
Class 4A
Orange Beach is the state’s top-ranked team despite competing at the AHSAA’s Class 4A level. Their loss to South Warren of Kentucky in a 6-1 setback on April 9 ended a 45-game win streak at the time. The Makos had only allowed 25 runs all season prior to the relative outburst by the Spartans.
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