Auburn knocks off ‘Noles, 10-9

We didn’t make it out to the ballpark today because we’re four hours away in Starkville, Miss.

Have no fear. The boss admirably filled in. Here are his thoughts from today’s 10-9 victory over No. 5 Florida State.

The game had to be stopped.

Florida State centerfielder Tyler Holt needed his glove.

He lost it over the fence trying to catch a deep fly by Auburn’s Joseph Sanders.

Holt had a bead on the ball, followed it to the warning track, stuck up his glove and squeezed. The ball hit the glove, Holt hit the wall, then, the ball and the glove hit the ground outside of Plainsman Park.

Three-run home run, the lead and enough cushion for the Tigers to hold on and win 10-9 over the No. 5 team in the country.

It was Auburn’s first win over Florida State (6-1) in the last seven games, dating back to the four-game series the Seminoles swept early in 2008. Actually, the last time the Tigers beat FSU was Feb. 10, 2006 – a 5-2 affair at Plainsman Park.

It was also a rebound game for AU (3-4), after losing 14-5 in Tallahassee on Friday afternoon.

“I talked to the team,” Auburn head coach John Pawlowski said. “Really, yesterday was not a good day for us. … We didn’t play well – just not a good day for Auburn baseball yesterday. I told them today is another day, another opportunity.

“They never seem to give up and battled back and found a way to win a ballgame today.”

Down 8-7 with one out in the bottom of the sixth and runners on first and third, Sanders took advantage of FSU relief pitcher Bo O’Dell’s hanging curveball and sent it to straightaway center.

Holt tracked the ball all the way to the fence, and leaped to snag it before it could get out of the park. He did, but the force of the collision into the wall sent Holt’s glove and the ball out of the park and then Holt to the ground.

“I saw it go in Holt’s glove …” Sanders said. “I was like, ‘He just did that.’ But at least the guy from third scored. But I saw when he landed he didn’t have a glove, so I was like, ‘Thank God.’”

The shot scored Justin Hargett and Trent Mummey, who both reached on singles. It was the second, third and fourth runs of the inning off of O’Dell, as Brian Fletcher led off the frame with a solo home run to left field.

It was Sanders’ fourth home run in the last three games – all against FSU – and his fifth of the season.

“I’m in a little groove right now, I guess,” Sanders said. “I hope it keeps going.”

Pawlowski agreed.

“He’s been playing very well,” the first-year head coach said. “He’s seeing the ball pretty well right now, and that was a huge three-run homer.”

With a 10-8 lead, Pawlowski went to his bullpen and junior right-hander Austin Hubbard, who came in for the final three innings to pick up his first-career save.

Other than a solo home run to Holt in the eighth, Hubbard was near flawless, as he struck out four of the 11 batters he faced.

“It was awesome,” Sanders said of Hubbard’s appearance. “He came in there and shut the door right in their faces. He left one pitch up, but a pitcher is going to do that. He shut the door on them and did an incredible job.”

Michael Hurst earned the win for the Tigers, facing just three batters in a third of an inning. But since he was the pitcher of record when Auburn mounted its sixth-inning comeback, the junior eared his first victory of the year.

Auburn started the game down 3-0 after 2 1/2 innings, but scored three runs in the third and three in the fourth to take a 6-4 lead.

Florida State wasn’t done, though, throwing a four-spot up in the top of the sixth for what looked like the knockout punch.

But Sanders, Hubbard and Co. had different plans, using Friday’s blowout loss as motivation.

“That was huge to come back here and not have them beat us here,” Hubbard said. “After (Friday), and not playing so hot … I think it woke us up, so that was huge.”

Mummey led Auburn at the plate, going 3-for-4 with an RBI, while Sanders was 2-for-5 with five RBI.

Holt was 3-for-3 for the Seminoles, including two doubles and a home run.

Auburn and FSU are supposed to finish the four-game series at 1 p.m. today. However, with the forecast calling for freezing temperatures and maybe even some snow, the start time could be postponed or the game cancelled indefinitely.

“Hopefully the weather will clear up for us,” Pawlowski said. “It’s supposed to be a little dicey in the morning.”

Pawlowski said the latest today’s game would start would be 3 p.m., giving the teams a two-hour window for the weather to clear up if that is the case.

(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)

Auburn one win away from clinching 2nd place after blowout victory in Starkville

We wrote a lot about today’s game so there’s no need to write any more. Here’s tomorrow’s story today.

Big, big win for your Auburn Tigers.

STARKVILLE, Miss.—Mississippi State’s Ravern Johnson made the backdoor cut to the hoop, took the pass with no one within feet of him and went up for the two-handed dunk.

Some Auburn players were already headed back down the floor, but the groan from the 7,134 fans Saturday at Humphrey Coliseum made them pause. The ball shimmied around the rim and popped into DeWayne Reed’s hands.

“That’s about where the shoe rolled,” Mississippi State coach Rick Stansbury said. “From that point on, we ran in quicksand for the rest of the night.”

Rasheem Barrett knocked down a mid-range jumper 13 seconds later with 14:19 to play in the first half and Auburn never trailed again.

The Tigers didn’t exactly walk on water from that point forward, but they put forth their most balanced game of the year to run away with a 76-58 victory in one of their least favorite places to play.

The win, Auburn’s sixth in its last seven, put the Tigers in sole possession of second place in the SEC West with two regular season games to play. Auburn needs to win just once or have both Alabama and MSU each lose to clinch second place, which translates into a first-round bye for the SEC Tournament.

“In previous years, we were always at the bottom of the SEC and now we are playing at the end of the year for something,” junior forward Lucas Hargrove said. “We aren’t just playing to be playing now. We are playing for postseason hope.”

Hargrove led Auburn’s dominance from the bench with 12 points and one highlight-reel alley-oop with 6:03 to play that officially ended an eight-game losing streak at Humphrey Coliseum, sent the majority of MSU fans to the doors and set the Tigers up for their most lopsided victory in Starkville.

“Any time we can hush them up a little bit, it does a lot for our basketball team,” Hargrove said. “Great risk, great reward.”

Hargrove, Frankie Sullivan and Brendon Knox combined for 36 points on 15-of-22 shooting off the Auburn bench. Mississippi State countered with zero. 

The trio’s effort more than made up for a down night from Auburn’s top three scorers. Korvotney Barber, Tay Waller and Reed combined for 22 points – more than 17 less than their combined average for the season.

“When you have that kind of balance, it’s hard to focus on certain people,” coach Jeff Lebo said. “I liked our balance and we got a little bit from everyone tonight.”

While Hargrove brought energy and athleticism both inside and outside the paint, Knox presented a tricky matchup for MSU bigman Jarvis Varnado.

Knox went right after the lanky, 6-foot-9 shot-blocker, rendering the bulk of his five field goals to be short on style points.

“Brendon is a little awkward when he gets in there,” Lebo said with a smile as he put his arm around Knox. “I think that helped him more than anything tonight against Varnado because he didn’t know where it was coming from.”

Sullivan, meanwhile, hurt the Bulldogs with great timing.

Two of Sullivan’s three 3-pointers came directly after an Auburn offensive rebound from a missed free throw. The first capped a five-point play of sorts to put the Tigers up double-digits for the rest of the first half.

Sullivan finished with 14 points to lead all Auburn scorers. None of Auburn’s five starters played more than 29 minutes.

“Our play off the bench was terrific,” Lebo said. “I thought that was the difference in the game.”

Mississippi State’s cold shooting throughout also played a major role, as the Bulldogs shot 35 percent from the field and knocked down just nine of their 30 3-point attempts.

“That,” Lebo said, “was certainly a big factor.”

Stansbury adamantly and repeatedly said Lebo was the factor, as he singled out Auburn beat reporters in the post-game press conference and demanded that Lebo’s preparation should be the headline for the story of Auburn’s biggest win to date.

“(Auburn) and LSU,” Stansbury said, “are probably the two best teams in the league right now.”

The star: All three of Frankie Sullivan’s 3-pointers served major importance, as the freshman led the Tigers with 14 points.
The co-star: Lucas Hargrove had 12 points and one big dunk off the Auburn bench.
Mississippi State’s best: Jarvis Varnado led the Bulldogs with 14 points and nine rebounds.
It was over when…: Auburn used separate 20-4 and 10-1 runs in the first half to take command of Saturday’s game.
Big victory: Auburn snapped an eight-game losing streak at Humphrey Coliseum with its widest margin of victory ever in Starkville.

(Photo credit: AP)

A basketball game of large importance to be played in Starkville this evening

STARKVILLE, Miss.—That face coach Jeff Lebo is making up there is nearly the same look we had on our face when we hopped onto the spiffy, fancy schmancy beds here at a brand new Hilton Garden Inn.

We’re told that the ever-so-smart mattress adjusts to your body type, which “provides perfect support for a restorative night’s sleep.“

Whatever. The first few moments are a bit painful. Think planks of wood on top of concrete.

Anyways, we aren’t just here in StarkVegas for nothing. The Auburn five will be taking on Mississippi State in a few hours a couple miles up the road at Humphrey Coliseum.

There’s plenty at stake. An Auburn win puts the Tigers in sole possession of second place in the SEC West with two games to play. Remember, the top two teams in each division get a first-round bye in the upcoming SEC Tournament. We’re pretty sure landing that spot would make Auburn a lock for the NIT. Winning out and a strong run in the conference tournament might put the Tigers in conversation to receive an at-large to the NCAA Tournament.

At this point, that’s still a pipe dream. Let’s take a page out of the CoachSpeak bible and go one game at a time.

“It’s nice being able to play meaningful games at this time of the year,” said Lebo, who has yet to take the Tigers to the postseason in his five years on the Plain. “They have put themselves in the position with their play to do that. It is fun.”

Read the rest of our newspaper story here.

(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)

Alabama just too good for Auburn to halt neverending streak

TUSCALOOSA—We learned one big thing here tonight.

Alabama is still for real when it comes to gymnastics.

Yes, Auburn wasn’t as sharp as it has been throughout one of the best seasons in team history, but the Gym Tiders were basically flawless. The 197.350-196.175 final score is what the gymnastically-inclined call a blowout. We’re finally getting this sport down and we can definitely concur. The Gym Tiders were much, much better tonight.

“They just were better,” senior all-rounder A.J. Mills (pictured above) said. “Overall, we maybe came in too hyped.”

The added hype to finally beat Alabama, as TV cameras swirled around the floor and 15,075 largely pink-clad fans (in support of a breast cancer fundraiser) screamed with every stuck landing from the Gym Tiders, was too much to keep the Tigers focused on themselves, coach Jeff Thompson said.

“The kids probably won’t admit it, but they were trying to win,” he said. “We’re not mentally tough enough yet to do that.

“We need to just put everything out of our minds and go out there and just make it simple: Do my job. But we were trying to do our jobs better than we ever did them, and it just made us a little shaky.”

Alabama coach Sarah Patterson, of course, loved what she saw. She also loves this “rivalry.“ Alabama is now 97-9, winners of 97 straight.

“I’d like to think that we bring out the best in them and they bring out the best in us,” Patterson said. “Regardless of what people say, it’s good for college gymnastics, it’s good for our state of Alabama to have that kind of heated rivalry.”

(Photo credit: Todd Van Emst)

Auburn gymnastics looks to snap 96-meet losing streak to Alabama

Pictured above is your Auburn gymnastics coach Jeff Thompson. He likes graphs. We’ll get to that soon.

Earlier today he spoke with a handful of reporters about tomorrow’s mega-huge meet at No. 11 Alabama. No. 5 Auburn has lost 96 consecutive meets to the Gym Tiders. That’s a lot.

Anyways, Thompson went to the trouble of breaking down Auburn’s and Alabama’s scores throughout this season. He even crunched the numbers and averaged out the scores. They came out exactly equal.

I’m kind of a math geek. Kind of a dork. So I put all their scores in. I put our scores in and their scores in. And then I just clicked “line graph.“ It’s kind of funny that the Auburn graph came out in blue and the Alabama graph came out in red. I didn’t set that up, I promise. But you can kind of see the trend how we’re going up here and they’re headed down.

Yes, Coach Thompson is this geek.

If that’s so, consider us big fans of geeks here at Fourth and Blog. We appreciate Thompson’s affable nature and seemingly care-free attitude toward a subject that might elicit awkward silence and angry stares from others in the coaching world. He even offered us a replica copy of the pictured graph. We declined. The picture more than sufficed.

As for tomorrow’s meet, which we will be attending, it doesn’t appear that Auburn will ever get a better chance to snap the uber-streak.

The Tigers have been rolling of late and have shown stready improvement from meet to meet. The Gym Tiders, meanwhile, have gone through an uncharacteristic swoon. They’ve lost their last two meets, in which they failed to record a score of 196 or higher. Alabama coach Sarah Peterson isn’t exactly used to this kind of adversity and has made it very clear that Alabama has been handicapped with injuries and youth this season.

Thompson could care less about Alabama’s alleged struggles.

Coaches have different personalities. I guess when you have a 30-year streak going and it might come to an end, you would want people to think there was a good reason. We’re going to put our best kids out there, they’re going to put their best kids out there and hopefully the judges decide we’re the better team.

(Photo credit: My BlackBerry)