"Bob Petrino joined the groups "Abusing Defenses" and "Looking for Jobs." -- Jet, simulating a certain someone's Facebook feed
3.22.2008
News of the day, 3/23
Hey everyone. It's a lovely day at the ol' ball yard: Mostly sunny, 75 degrees and a reason to be outside. This job has its perks.
Let's get to business.
Thanks, as always, for doing your part to make this the Auburn blog on the 'net.
BASEBALL: UK -- 000040100 -- 5 AU -- 10003300x -- 7 FINAL W -- Luckie (3-2) L -- Albers (4-1) S -- Woodall (6)
WOMEN'S BASKETBALL: AU -- 56 GW -- 66 FINAL
NCAA WOMEN'S SWIMMING & DIVING: Auburn finished second to Arizona. Final results to come.
As you can see above, the baseball team scored a second win against Kentucky today. THe team was pretty impressive. Starter Cory Luckie wiggled free of some potentially nasty jams (he's a freshman, too) and the Tigers had hits at the critical times.
If Auburn wins the series against Tennessee next weekend, it may be time to upgrade the team's stock. Based on what I've seen this weekend, Auburn could challenge for an SEC Tournament in the 6, 7, 8 range. Hey, that's progress for a team that hasn't been to Hoover in years.
Women's hoops played pretty well for a while today against George Washington. Poor rebounding work on the defensive end, though, allowed the Colonials to get plenty of second-chance baskets during the second half. So it goes. Auburn graduates a peripheral starter and two reserves. Auburn (20-12) ought to be pretty good next year.
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 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:
Hey everyone. Sorry to be a little in arrears here. I'm dealing with a bug that has cut my work production to almost zero, and the blog (along with the HOTTIES by extension) hasn't received the love it deserves.
I was fine until my ears started getting all fluidy. My head isn't happy.
I get sick like MAYBE once per year. I'll be back soon.
BREAKING NEWS: Auburn women's team made the NCAA Tournament as an 11 seed playing George Washington in the first round. The Tigers lost by two points against GW in early January. It was an excellent game between two teams that were evenly matched. This second go-round has Auburn optimistic to say the least.
I was over at Nell Fortner's house and the scene was highly electric -- lost of screams and perhaps a few tears. The team was extremely geeked to make the field after a four-year hiatus.
**********
Hey everyone. I enjoyed a pretty low-profile weekend in advance of what could be a pretty busy and fun week. We've got the women's team aiming for the NCAAs, the women's swim team headed for the NCAAs, ASU men in the NIT, baseball at home next weekend and, of course, a smattering of football thrown in for everyone's sanity.
Let's get to business.
I haven't said this in a while and I'm sorry: Thanks for making this ths Auburn blog on the 'net. That's why we call it the HABOTN.
I want to address something that one of my favorite HOTTIES, jaytiger, suggested in the blog comments over the weekend.
He didn't agree with my belief that the basketball team's troubles are Jeff Lebo's fault. I guess my re-direct is: Then whose fault is it? Lebo now is 57-64 in four seasons with a 19-45 record against Southeastern Conference teams. I don't think Lebo had a role in Josh Dollard's "medical" drama or Vot Barber's broken wrist or Boubacar Sylla's ankle or Archie Miaway's academic problems. Of course not.
Still, the team doesn't win. His best season so far is a 17-15 campaign in 2007. Some of you all act like Barber and Dollard were going to play like Kevin Garnett and Elton Brand.
Barring an completely unexpected change of events, Lebo will get another season to show that the injures -- and not poor overall stewardship -- were to blame. The pressure will be high. If the team sputters, I don't know where Lebo would go from here.
The baseball team didn't perform particularly well at Florida during the weekend, losing all three games. I don't know what to think about this team overall. The Gators were a pretty reasonable (read: Not overpowering) first-series opponent and you saw how that went.
TEAM: .290 (32/110) with an OBP of .372. That isn't awful. The problem was that RBI production wasn't spready out evenly over the three-game series. The team hit very well on Saturday ... when Scott Shuman melted down on the mound.
• THE RING OF FIRE • INAUGURAL CLASS Phormerly Phred Scottie B. in Tennessee crudup
Hoopie Ron Mexico
hip-hopanonymous
AUnMobilz
Sullivan013
Scott from Tucson
scottatl
jhag**FRANCHISE PLAYER**
Hey everyone. It's a lovely day at the ol' ball yard: Mostly sunny, 75 degrees and a reason to be outside. This job has its perks.
As you can see above, the baseball team scored a second win against Kentucky today. THe team was pretty impressive. Starter Cory Luckie wiggled free of some potentially nasty jams (he's a freshman, too) and the Tigers had hits at the critical times.
