Auburn gymnastics head coach Jeff Graba called he and the Tigers’ open to the 2024 season a gauntlet.

And he’s not wrong.

Auburn opened its season in a quad meet against UCLA, Cal and Alabama – three teams which found themselves inside the top-10 to open the season – on Jan. 6. Graba and the Tigers finished third in the field, landing behind Cal and Alabama.

Since then, Auburn has also hosted the Kentucky Wildcats, who walked into Neville Arena ranked as the ninth-best team in the country and later left with a victory that helped bump them up to No. 6 in the nation.

“It’s a lot of fun to compete against the best. I don’t think you get better if you don’t compete against really quality opponents,” Graba said. “But it is a bit of a gauntlet. I think the month of January is only going to be top-10 teams we’re competing against.”

On Friday night, the 12th-ranked Tigers will continue their treacherous stretch of January meets as seventh-ranked Florida comes to town.

The Gators are on the heels of a 2023 season that saw them finish as national runners-up.

“Across the floor will be Florida. That’s a really quality team, somebody who’s trying for another national championship,” Graba said of the Gators, who ranked as the second-best team in the country during the preseason. “It’ll be a good measuring stick, just like Kentucky was.”

Fortunately for Auburn, the Tigers fared well against the Wildcats in their first home meet of the season on Jan. 13.

While Auburn couldn’t top Kentucky at home, the Tigers hung around with the Wildcats, who are coming off a 2023 Elite Eight berth.

Kentucky went on to edge out Auburn 197.475 to 197.025.

“They showed up, they looked like they were ready to be in the Elite Eight again,” Graba said of the Wildcats. “And we were close.”

Heading into the final rotation, Auburn was still “within striking distance” of Kentucky, Graba says. But the Tigers “gave some stuff away.”

Relative to Auburn’s season-opening quad meet, the Tigers’ scores on vault, beam and floor all went up. Meanwhile, Auburn’s score on the uneven bars took a dip.

But it’s still the 4-inch-wide balance beam apparatus that continues to give Auburn’s lineup fits and stands as the Tigers’ lowest-scoring event. Last week against Kentucky, a fall in the middle of the beam lineup forced Auburn to settle on counting a 9.650 balance check.

While Auburn junior all-arounder Sophia Groth recognizes her team’s struggles on beam, she’s confident the Tigers can continue to improve.

“I know we’ve had a rocky start on beam and I think that was a struggle event for us last year, but I think it’s all mental at this point,” Groth said following the loss to Kentucky. “We physically can be there. We physically have the talent and the capability to do it.”

For Graba and the Tigers, reaching the 197-point milestone was one of Auburn’s goals for its meet against Kentucky – especially after the Tigers finished with a score of 196.600 in their season-opening quad meet.

While it might be a rather arbitrary number, finishing with a score of 197 and beyond means a team finished with routine averages of 9.850 — a score that’s considered great by all accounts.

However, Graba wasn’t getting too tied up in the meet’s scores last week against Kentucky.

“The main job was to fight tonight and get a little bit better,” Graba said following the loss. “And we did.”

That said, Graba recognizes that Auburn is approaching a point in the season in which the its strides need to become a bit longer.

“We have to get better this week,” Graba said Tuesday as he previewed Friday’s meet against Florida. “And I have to feel more like we’ve taken a step toward February being a good month.”

Having been forced to replace the production of all-Americans Suni Lee and Derrian Gobourne, Auburn had a bit of a hall pass to start the season as it looked to craft lineups with 10 new faces on the roster.

But as Graba put it Tuesday, it’s time to tighten up on the experimenting.

“We need to stop experimenting sometime in February and settle down,” Graba said. “This is not an experimental year, this is an experimental month and then we’re going to settle down. It will not be a good Friday if we have more question marks than answers.”

Just as Auburn has been tasked with replacing stars like Lee and Gobourne, Florida has had to navigate its lineups without the likes of Trinity Thomas and Rachel Baumann.

The Gators come to Neville Arena with a perfect 3-0 record, but haven’t seen anywhere near the same level of competition as the Tigers. While Auburn has opened its season with four top-10 opponents, Florida has yet to face off against a team in the top-25.

Florida’s season-high score of 197.100 also isn’t that far off from Auburn’s season-high score of 197.025.

“I’d like to see if we can close that gap with Florida and see if we can get to the final event and have a shot at a team that’s trying to win a national championship,” Graba said. “And that means, by default, we can start actually thinking that way.”

Auburn and Florida will meet on the floor of Neville Arena Friday night in a meet that’ll get underway at 5 p.m. and be televised on SEC Network.