Friday, March 16, 2007

Looking ahead to A-Day

As I write this, it’s 11 p.m. (Central) Friday night, which means we’re only about 14 hours away from the start of A-Day. I’m sure you can feel my excitement from wherever you’re sitting.

But it will be a big day for a lot of Auburn players. As I wrote in tomorrow’s Opelika-Auburn News, there are quite a few Auburn players—mostly the redshirt freshmen, but also a few walk-ons—who have never experienced anything like this in Jordan-Hare Stadium. Sure, they attended games last season and stood on the sideline. A few of them might even have dressed out. But A-Day will be their first chance to run out onto the field and actually play. That’s gotta make a big difference.

Stuff like that—those kids’ excitement when they take the field and hear the crowd roar—helps keep A-Day interesting, which isn’t always easy. One sad consequence of the NCAA’s decision to limit teams to just 15 practices is that a lot of the charm has gone out of spring games, and not just at Auburn.

Back when spring practice lasted as long as coaches felt like having it, the spring game was a real game. Players or coaches picked sides and played an honest-to-goodness game, with evenly matched teams and a real score. My colleague Phillip Marshall of the Huntsville Times tells a funny story about one of Pat Dye’s A-Day games, when media coached the teams, print guys vs. TV guys. That’s the kind of silliness that spring games should be all about.

Now, A-Day is just another controlled scrimmage, because it’s one of AU’s precious 15 practice days, and therefore too valuable to “waste” on something like a game.

The good outweighs the bad here, because limiting spring practice is good for players, who actually get a little bit of free time in the spring and summer. (Though not nearly as much as you’d think.) But I’ll always miss the free-wheeling spring games of the old days.

Speaking of A-Day, I’ll be updating this here blog regularly during the game and immediately after, so be sure to check it out. Also, we’ll have all kinds of coverage on www.oanow.com, including multiple stories from me and at least one from my colleague Tom Peavy. So check the site early and often, and enjoy.

But enough about that for now. I’ve got a few other things to get to.

I wrote a story about Brandon Cox for Saturday’s paper. I’ve been watching Brandon practice for a long time...three-and-a-half years now, since I arrived on the Auburn beat in 2004. And this spring, he’s looked like a totally different person. I watched him throw in a 7-on-7 drill against AU’s first-team defensive backs and linebackers today, and I was amazed at how sharp he looked. I don’t think I saw him throw a single incompletion, and every pass was right on the money. It’s pretty clear that his injuries in 2006 were more severe than anyone really suspected. They obviously hurt his play. But if he can stay as healthy as he is right now, he could have a huge senior year, which is exactly what Auburn needed.

In other news, I just got back from the Auburn-Alabama gymnastics meet at Beard-Eaves. I hope I’m not ruining the suspense when I tell you Bama won. It’s the 91st win in a row for the GymTide against the Tigers. (Note: I have no idea if Alabama calls itself the GymTide. Probably not. But I always thought “GymDawgs” was a cool nickname for Georgia, and I think it should catch on elsewhere.)

Auburn had a scary moment before the meet even started, when freshman walk-on Carmen Nelms was warming up on vault. She landed strangely and seriously injured her ankle; she’s reportedly undergoing surgery on the ankle tonight or tomorrow. She was in pretty serious pain, and it clearly had the rest of the team shaken up. Her absence also left AU seriously shorthanded: Four other gymnasts were already out with injuries or illness. So head coach Jeff Thompson had to rework his lineup a little bit, going with just five vaulters and putting sophomore Aimee Goheen in on beam.

Goheen held up her end of the bargain: She nailed a career-high 9.775 on her turn on beam. Not bad, considering she hadn’t even competed on beam since 2005.

But Alabama was just too good. And as gymnastics coaches never tire of repeating, it’s not like you can play defense. The Tide hit almost all of its routines tonight, which is tough to beat.

Whew. I’ve written more about gymnastics in the last two days than in the rest of my life combined. Moving on.

Quentin Groves wanted me to take a minute to make a public-service announcement on his behalf: The “Quentin Groves” on myspace.com isn’t him. Apparently, someone’s just posing as him. I guess that’s the price of fame. But Quentin’s not thrilled about it...apparently he had a pretty angry exchange with the guy, who refused to back down. So, enjoy your myspace.com fame, not-Quentin guy. It’s just sad, really.

All right...this post took about 20 minutes, which is probably about 18 minutes too long. I’m calling it a night...I’ve got to make sure I’m fresh and rested and ready to blog up a storm for you guys tomorrow.

Thursday, March 15, 2007

Spring practice rundown

Spring practice is almost over—just three practices left, counting A-Day on Saturday. It’s amazing how fast those 15 practice days go by.

At the start of spring practice, I listed five questions AU needed to answer this spring. I’ll have the answers in Saturday’s paper, as part of our package advancing A-Day. As a reminder, here are the questions:

1. How does Brandon Cox look?

2. Who’s the No. 1 receiver?

3. How will the offensive line shake out?

4. Can the linebackers live up to expectations?

5. Are the young kickers ready?

If you’ve followed spring football, you know the answers to some of these questions. You also know that a couple of them remain unanswered, and might not be answered until the start of the 2007 season. (Seems like a long way away, huh?)

But there are a few other questions that either didn’t make the five-question cut or that have cropped up unexpectedly over the course of spring practice. I’ll try to answer a few of those today.

1. Who’s the backup quarterback?
There’s no answer to this question, at least not yet. Junior Blake Field, who’s been the backup the last two years, has been in and out of practice with shoulder tendonitis. Field and Auburn’s coaches have been vague about his timeline to full recovery. Meanwhile, Neil Caudle and Steven Ensminger have looked like freshmen this spring, even against AU’s second-team defense. They’ve got a long way to go to be consistent enough to be full-time SEC quarterbacks, as does Field.

Then there’s Kodi Burns. Every Auburn fan I’ve spoken to has high hopes for Burns, whose high-school career in Arkansas was nothing short of amazing. But playing as a true freshman at Auburn—especially at quarterback—isn’t easy. In the eight-year Tommy Tuberville era, only one true freshman quarterback has played in a game: Gabe Gross, back in 1999. And the only reason Gabe started was because the offensive cupboard was all but bare.

That’s not the case now. There’s always a chance that Burns will learn the playbook and adjust to the college game with unprecedented speed, or that AU’s coaches will draw up a few special formations for him to make an impact, a la Tim Tebow at Florida. But history’s not on his side.

2. Will Greg Smith ever make an impact?
The jury’s still out, but I’ll say this: It’s not looking good. Greg is in better shape than he was when he arrived on campus, but to be honest, that’s not saying a whole lot. He’s a big, heavy guy, and all the working out in the world probably isn’t going to change that.

The coaches haven’t given up on him, not by a long shot. But it’s tough to look at the depth chart at the interior line spots and not wonder if Greg is running out of time. He’s already behind a lot of players his age or younger: Sen’Derrick Marks, Pat Sims, Jake Ricks and Mike Blanc. He’s also behind seniors Josh Thompson and Tez Doolittle. That’s a lot of ground he has to make up, especially since Auburn doesn’t usually play more than five or six d-tackles and noseguards in the course of a season.

Of course, as Don Dunn pointed out, that’s good for Auburn. Somebody’s gotta be last, and at the moment, Greg is last because all those guys are playing really well. So that’s a positive.

3. How good is Tristan Davis?
As anyone who’s ever heard me on the radio can attest, I’m a big believer in Tristan. (Though not as big a believer as my colleague Jay G. Tate of the Montgomery Advertiser. I think Jay secretly believes Tristan’s tears could cure cancer...if he ever wept.)

Tristan’s had a turbulent AU career, switching from defense to offense to defense and back. A year ago, after he impressed in limited opportunities at tailback against Kentucky and Ball State, Auburn’s coaches were privately telling anyone who would listen that he didn’t “have the hips” to be a running back, and that his true future was at safety.

So much for that...he could barely crack the playing rotation in the defensive backfield last season, and now he’s back at tailback. But with all Auburn’s running back talent, how much can he possibly play? One thing he’s been called upon to do this spring is prove he can run physically between the tackles and make people miss, rather than outrunning them. To my untrained eye, it looks like he’s had some success doing it. But AU has an awful lot of good tailbacks: Brad Lester, Mario Fannin, Ben Tate and Carl Stewart, plus incoming freshman Enrique Davis. It’ll be interesting to see just how Tristan fits into that depth chart. We’ll see in September.

That’s enough for now. I’ll add another installment tomorrow. If you can think of any other questions you’d like answered, drop me an e-mail or a comment. Thanks!

And so it begins…

Welcome, one and all, to the first installment of My Five Cents. (See, my name is Collin Mickle, and Mickle...nickel...five cents...two cents...Oh, forget it. It’s not important.)

First things first: Did you guys see how big that picture of my head was out on the front page of our sports section? Seriously, I looked like a tanner, hairier Charlie Brown. Terrifying.

I’d have more to complain about if that wasn’t what I actually looked like. But we’re moving on now.

I’m Collin Mickle, for those of you who didn’t recognize the huge head and uncombed hair just above the link you clicked on to get here. I’m the Auburn beat writer for the Opelika-Auburn News, which means this here blog is going to be dedicated to talking about AU sports...stuff that catches my eye, stuff that I can’t quite fit into one of my daily stories or stuff that’s happening RIGHTNOW. I’ll be posting multiple times a day, because that’s the kind of guy I am, so feel free to keep coming here for regular doses of AU insight.

But there’s more than that. Man can’t live on AU sports alone. It’s my blog, so we’ll also occasionally shoot the breeze about TV, music, pop culture, life as a sportswriter and the beauty—plus the occasional bad—of living in Auburn. Also, especially as summer drags on, there will be times when I shamelessly cheer for my beloved Cincinnati Reds. Y’know, because this is their year. Seriously. I have to believe this.

Anyway, the blog’s not just about me...It’s about you guys too. Please feel free to leave comments or to e-mail me at cmickle@oanow.com. I get a lot of e-mails asking questions about things that we don’t often have space to get into the paper. I always return my e-mails, but I’d also like to start posting some responses here. So keep those e-mails coming.

I’ll have my first actual, y’know, relevant blog entry up later today. We’ll be talking about—what else?—spring football.