Auburn update, 3/5

Hey everyone. I'll get right to it.

*I saw that Tommy Tuberville is featured on the front page of ESPN's college football page right now. It's a piece by Ivan Maisel (Mobile native) about spring football. I'm sure ESPN will change the art on this at some point soon ... so check it out while you can.

*Awful loss at Ole Miss on Saturday afternoon. It's hard to watch a group of guys work that hard for 39 minutes, then watch them bottom out so suddenly. It's interesting to me how differently players react to meltdowns. G Frank Tolbert nearly was in tears. F Josh Dollard was stoic. F Quan Prowell, known around these parts as "Gravy Train", was his usual self.

Auburn finished 4th in the West, and will play Georgia (East #5) at the SEC Tournament on Thursday night around 7:30. Times at the Georgia Dome are relative. I think Auburn will beat the Bulldogs. Florida awaits in the quarterfinals, which isn't winnable game for the Tigers. Auburn doesn't have those kinds of players.

*An even worse loss for the women against South Carolina in the women's tournament. I've been thinking about that program during the past few days and I'm just not sure how committed Nell Fortner is to this endeavor. She's walking that line between coach and personality -- she's an in-demand television analyst -- and I think that's affecting the team. Look, a team with Whitney Boddie (the star) and DeWanna Bonner and KeKe Carrier and Sherell Hobbs should have more than six conference wins. That's just how it is. It's weird to me that there seems to be a surplus of quality coaches around the SEC. It's a haven for quality women's basketball. Yet here's Auburn, a healthy program, making only cursory headway in its struggle to move into the upper class.

I decided to rank the league's coaches, which you can see below. If Florida and Arkansas make shrewd hires in the coming weeks, Fortner might fall deeper than 9th.

I'll admit my bias up front: I love Melanie Balcomb.

1.) Pat Summitt, Tennessee -- The best. Period.
2.) Melanie Balcomb, Vanderbilt -- Top-rate strategist, recruits well. Not as well as UT, but VU has players. She has a reputation for being a mean person. Just win, baby.
3.) Pokey Chatman, LSU -- Really nice person, optimistic, approaches the game with a more fluid approach. She doesn't just do things to do them. She'll let her teams play. I like that.
4.) Andy Landers, Georgia -- His highly aggressive actions on the court turn me off big time, but he wins a lot of games. And he always has a lot of players.
5.) Mickie DeMoss, Kentucky -- Doesn't have great players, yet UK has been competitive under DeMoss so far. I'd like to see what she can do with some top-rate talent.
6.) Carol Ross, Ole Miss -- Probably the nicest coach in the league. Turned a bad team into a 4th-place finisher very quickly. Her teams give consistent effort, which mimics the coach's personality.
7.) Susan Walvius, South Carolina -- She's been there 10 years! She was the SEC Coach of the Year in 2002. Went 0-fer in the league two years later, fielded a decent team this year. They're OK with that at USC, and I am as well.
8.) Sharon Fanning, MSU -- Average coach. She was average at UK before being average at MSU. She'll come upon some awesome players at time -- Tan White comes to mind from a few years ago -- and finish mid-pack. That's what you get with Fanning.
9.) Nell Fortner, Auburn -- She can recruit. The meltdowns Auburn showed in home losses to Kentucky, Arkansas (which prefaced the Razorbacks' nine-game losing streak) and Georgia were coaching problems.
10.) Susie Gardner, Arkansas -- Recently stepped down after a hellacious season. Still beat Auburn. Not a lot of talent on that roster.
11.) Carolyn Peck, Florida -- Recently stepped down after a 1-win conference season. Seemed like an OK strategist. There is almost no talent in that program right now.
12.) Stephany Smith, Alabama -- I'm kind of amazed that she hasn't been fired. They went 0-fer this year in the league. I want to say nice things about Smith because I think she's a good person who cares about her kids, but there is a total dearth of talent at Alabama right now. Navonda Moore is all they have. Even without talent, some teams can look good. Alabama doesn't. Just looks like a mess on the court.