Auburn picks up commit No. 25

In the midst of its biggest and final official weekend of on-campus visits, Auburn landed its 25th commit by wooing a proven player away from one of its SEC foes.

Two weeks after he told AuburnSports.com he would switch his commitment from Ole Miss to Auburn, Tallassee product Demond Washington made it official Saturday, according to the Web site.

Washington, a three-star athlete according to Rivals.com, played two seasons at Perkinston (Miss.) Gulf Coast junior college and was used at both running back and cornerback. He is expected to enroll in Auburn this summer and will have three years to play two seasons, according to AuburnSports.com.

Washington was a first-team 4A all-state selection by the Alabama Sports Writers Association after his senior season at Tallassee. Academic hurdles, however, prevented him from considering offers with major Division I schools.

After his official visit two weeks ago, Washington said being close to home wouldn’t have much of an impact on his decision.

“Being close to home, that’s not always good,” he said. “You can go home and get in trouble. If I decided to come here, that won’t be a factor. I’ll be here on the weekends.

“(Tallassee) is a small city, but there’s all kinds of trouble to get into. It’s easy to get into; hard to get out of.”

Washington said at that time Auburn coaches told him he would play on both offense and defense.

No Reed, no win for Auburn

DeWayne Reed didn’t start and played just three minutes in Saturday’s game against Vanderbilt.

His presence was certainly missed, but Vanderbilt, itself, couldn’t miss, so it’s up for debate as to whether Reed’s absence affected Saturday’s 82-75 outcome.

Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings had some interesting thoughts about the matter. He was understandably more in the mood to provide a little insight in the situation than Auburn coach Jeff Lebo was.

So was Reed’s absence a a big deal?

Absolutely. Absolutely. But certainly when you take a guy averaging 18 points per game out of the lineup for whatever reason. We’ve been through that ourselves because (A.J. Ogilvy) is under the weather and injured and things. It’s difficult when you take a very significant piece out of your lineup.

Stallings said Lebo was put in an unfair position, but made the right decision.

I respect Jeff for doing that ... It’s just really damaging to the entire fabric of your team when a guy is careless, irresponsible or selfish like that. We’ve all had that as coaches and I feel badly for Jeff because the only choice you have is to do what Jeff did. Here you’ve got a game against a team that’s lost four in a row and your leading scorer decides he can’t get there on time. That’s a bad, bad, bad place and a bad thing to have happen.

We caught a break certainly, but I feel badly for Jeff because those things are very unnecessary and those are things you can’t control as a coach. You can’t control whether a kid is late to the game. You can control what you do when they don’t show up on time but you can’t control if they get there on time or not.

Lebo said there would be no further disciplinary action on Reed.

Here’s a sneak peek of tomorrow’s newspaper story. We’ve got a bunch of other stuff on our plate at the moment.

DeWayne Reed walked off the court Saturday, shot a wry smile at someone in the Beard-Eaves-Memorial Coliseum stands before pushing on through the Northeast tunnel.

The junior point guard left the floor after the Tigers’ 82-75 loss to Vanderbilt with his teammates, but he didn’t arrive at the proper time with them earlier in the morning.

Reed didn’t start, entered midway through the first half and was yanked three minutes later. He sat the entire second half on the bench with a towel on his head while Vanderbilt torched the Tigers from the perimeter.

“He was late,” coach Jeff Lebo said. “I didn’t like his energy and I sat him.”

It was unclear how late Reed was for Saturday’s 1 p.m. tip. Neither of the Auburn players made available to the media said they knew. Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings said he saw Reed walk to the court after the rest of Auburn’s players had already stretched.

“He was late enough not to play,” forward Lucas Hargrove said.

Maybe Auburn would have snapped its 12-game losing streak to SEC East foes with Reed available or maybe it wouldn’t. Reed’s normally tough defense might not have been enough to cool the Commodores, who shot 61 percent from the field and knocked down five big 3’s in the second half.

But was it a difference-maker?

“Absolutely,” Stallings said. “Absolutely.

“It’s difficult when you take a significant piece out of your lineup.”

(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)

A quick hello and goodbye from Gene Chizik

Gene Chizik took about 10 seconds out of his apparently extraordinarily busy schedule this afternoon to wave to the fans at the Auburn men’s basketball game.

He also gave Aubie a man hug, as documented in the picture above.

Your Auburn Tigers are currently struggling a bit with Vanderbilt. We’ll have a full update at the end.

(Photo credit: My BlackBerry)

In which I am almost party to a donnybrook

Who says private schools don’t know how to throw down?

If you want to read about the Lee-Scott/Glenwood boys’ and girls’ games, you can right now. If you want to read about how a good old fashioned rivalry could have turned into good old fashioned fisticuffs, keep it here.

During the girls’ game (which the Gators won 43-40) Lee-Scott fans were thumping Thundersticks together behind the Glenwood bench, which Gators coach Tim Mayse felt was in violation of the AISA’s rule against bringing artificial noisemakers to a game. He brought this to the officials’ attention and they made them stop. For a little while.

After halftime, the refs got both sides together and talked over the Thunderstick conundrum. The end result was allowing the Warriors’ fans to continue with their noisemaking. They just had to be a certain distance away from the court. And not right behind the Gators’ bench.

“Actually, I’m glad they used them because it served as an inspiration to us,“ Mayse said. “So I appreciate them bringing them. Hope they come back next time with more.“

Gators’ fans responded by finding whatever they could to make noise. I think I saw somebody banging two trash can lids together. This guy was not happy. They also brought out about 100 plastic hand-clapper things for the boys’ game. Where they got them, I don’t know.

But this is all fun and games. Then the boys’ game (which the Warriors won 67-58) started and things got dicey. Four technical fouls and five fan ejections later, people on both sides of the fieldhouse were shouting at each other. Oh, and there were 36 total fouls - one for every 53 seconds. Glenwood’s fan section had to be massaged by Mayse and boys’ coach Dusty Perdue, who returned to his bench to a giant applause from the “Bleacher Creatures.“ Warriors players and coaches gave their fans a lot of soothing hand motions from the bench. 

Things came to a head when Lee-Scott’s Shane Corbett (who used to go to Glenwood) and Glenwood’s Deante Thomas started getting “competitive,“ and Corbett was called for a technical. More shouting ensued and the refs looked really overwhelmed. That’s when Lee-Scott coach Chad Prewett called a timeout. Because everyone needed a breather.

“We told our kids to show some poise,“ Prewett said. “I think we did the last minute or so, but it kind of got haywire there for a while.“

All in all, cooler heads prevailed and the players did admirably amongst the tumult and the shouting. Everyone shook hands and made up after the game, and we can only assume the peace between Lee-Scott and Glenwood will last for another 1,000 years. Or at least until they probably meet again at the Region tournament at Huntingdon next week.

OH! And there was good rhythmic chanting had by all. That’s one of the best parts of rivalry games. Lee-Scott answered Glenwood’s repeated choruses of “You Can’t Do That,“ (a classic), with “We Just Did.“ Glenwood started up a “Get Your Own Chants,“ verse when they felt as if the Warriors were infringing on their intellectual properties. And one Glenwood fan got a cheerleader’s cone and used it to inform one of the refs that his mother didn’t love him. That was just mean.

(Honorable mention: Between the cheerleaders’ chants of “LEE” and “SCOTT,“ some conscientious fans countered with “HYPHEN!“ I’m always up for being grammatically correct.)

The day after her first loss in more than a year, Whitney Boddie speaks

Need a good quote? Need some insight into a game you didn’t see? Need a student-athlete who will at least pretend that she enjoys talking to you?

Meet Whitney Boddie. The Auburn women’s senior point guard.

Boddie took some time out of her afternoon today to talk with the blog about last night’s 67-58 loss at Georgia. If you haven’t been paying attention, it was Auburn’s first of the season, as the Tigers sit at 20-1 heading into Sunday’s game at LSU.

The loss marked Auburn’s first in nearly a year and Boddie’s first in well over 365 days. Boddie missed the bulk of her junior year, as she was academically ineligible. Auburn is 30-2 with Boddie in the lineup since the start of the 2007-08 season.

Here’s what Boddie had to tell us.

So, how does it feel 24 hours later?
It was tough. You’re undefeated then all of a sudden losing is not easy at all. It was one of those things where we sucked it up, it happened, and now it’s just time to move on and get better. That’s all we can do.

Did the undefeated start make the loss that much tougher?
It was tough just because we wanted to beat them because they’re Georgia. It was another SEC game. I don’t think it would have made a difference if it was Georgia or Appalachian State—I’m just throwing a team out there. It’s a loss and we’re all competitive and we don’t like losing. It’s hard either way.

How about you personally?
I don’t really take them, honestly. Yesterday I think I handled it probably as best as I ever have since I’ve been in college. I hate losing so much. It was just the way we lost. It wasn’t really like they played harder than us…I don’t know, we just didn’t make shots. The stuff that we were accustomed to doing just didn’t work for us.

We all know it sucks, but did Auburn need a loss?
I don’t know because I’d rather lose now than get to the NCAA tournament and lose in the first round. In a sense, it put things in perspective for us. Wins tend to cover up some of the things you don’t do so well. When you lose it’s like ‘we did this wrong, we did that wrong.‘ Where as when we were outscoring people, that’s what it was. Against Georgia, we couldn’t outscore them and when we needed to turn on our defense to get stops we couldn’t do it. We were just so used to beating teams by putting more points on the board instead of getting stops the way other teams win. It really showed us what we need to improve on.

Seems like every team’s bringing their best when Auburn comes up on their schedule. Is that the case?
It seems like everyone brings their A game against us. I honestly don’t know.

(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)