News of the day, 3/22

Hey everyone. Thanks to the HOTTIES who emailed and posted kind words of health-related encouragement during the past few days. I feel much better now.

So let's get moving.

I'll work hard during the next few days to re-establish this as the HOTTEST Auburn blog on the 'net. This after having the hottest forehead on the 'net for a few days.

UPDATE @ 9:30 p.m.: The Auburn women's swimmers had what you could call a difficult day at the NCAA meet. They lost significant ground to Arizona. Another Auburn championship seems highly unlikely.

Here are the latest standings through night TWO of THREE:
Arizona 361
AUBURN 244
Texas A&M 227
Stanford 212
Cal 203
Florida 178
Georgia 133
Tennessee 120
Indiana 110
Washington 82

I'll break down the highlights tomorrow.

UPDATE @ 8:50 p.m.: Auburn 2, Kentucky 0: The Wildcats stranded 12 baserunners. Auburn starter Grant Dayton worked six innings for the win. Evan Crawford wasn't at his best, walking four batters during his 1 1/3 inning, but Bryan Woodall was fairly gross during the final 1 2/3. He struck out three of the five batters he faced.

Auburn now is 13-8 overall and 1-3 in the league. Kentucky is 18-1, 3-1.

The teams resume their series Saturday at 3 p.m.


Auburn did excellent work at the women's NCAA swimming and diving championships on Thursday night. I know this isn't exactly mainstream stuff, though I think NCAA meets deserve significant coverage. Auburn, as usual, has an outstanding team this year.

Though Day One:
Arizona 151
AUBURN 132
California 89
Texas A&M 88
Stanford 80
Florida 71
Tennessee 59
Texas 51
Michigan 50
Kentucky 47

Things You Need To Know:

**Sophomore Ava Ohlgren won the 200 individual medley with a time of 1:53.94, missing an NCAA record by .03 seconds. The record holder? Former Auburn star Maggie Bowen.

Ohlgren wasn't exactly devastated by not beating Bowen's time.

``Oh well. I'll get it next year," she said.

**Senior Emily Kukors finished third in the same event, making the 200 IM a points bonanza for the Tigers. One minor issue for Kukors: the second-place finisher was her younger sister, Ariana, who swims for Washington.

**Sophomore Maggie Bird posted a career-best time in the 500 freestyle (4:39.51), which earned her a second-place finish. It was the second-fastest Auburn time ever. Bird finished eighth in the prelims, which gave her last spot in the finals. Once in the finals, though, she powered up.

**Auburn's 200 freestyle relay team finished third with a time of 1:28.79, which set a school recohttp://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifrd. That group includes Ava Ohlgren, Kara Denby, Emily Kukors and Emile Ewing.

**Auburn's 400 individual medley relay team finished second despite posting its best time of the season. This was the first time the Tigers finished in the top three since 2003. The winner, Arizona, was three seconds faster and set NCAA, American and U.S. Open records in the process.

UPDATE @ 2:30 p.m.: I hope you all were watching the WKU-Drake game. I'd put that in the top 10 games I've ever seen. WKU was up by 16 points with 8:00 remaining, lost em all, went to overtime, went the length of the court for a three-pointer to win at the buzzer.

The official scorebook looks like this:
WKTY
Ty Rogers made 3-pt. Jump Shot, Assist Tyrone Brazelton
End of game.

I'll link to a highlight as soon as I find one. The BW3 in Montgomery was rockin', I tell ya. And if you're wondering why a UK graduate would support WKU in anything, well, you'll just have to figure that one our for yourself.

A somewhat major housekeeping note ... the Advertiser has asked that I move this blog to their site within the next few weeks. That means this address will go dark, more or less, within the next few weeks. It'll be a deal where you'll have to bookmark the new page because the actual URL addy will be like 500 letters long.

I'll give you more information as it comes to me.

UPDATE @ 2:40 p.m.: You know I keep up with Guitar Hero. An American, Chris Chike, recently was named the "world's best Guitar Hero player" by Guinness. Not the beer. Anyone who knocks out Through the Fire and Flames on expert has reached a maximum level of studliness in my book. God bless Chris Chike, though, for following his dreams.

Here's a little video CBS News put together for the ceremony: