AU FOOTBALL NOTEBOOK: Tigers getting back to basics

Auburn’s not going to reinvent the wheel during the bye week.

No, the Tigers are going to spend the next 10 days preparing for the Iron Bowl and No. 2 Alabama trying to get down to the basics of why it rolls.

And how to keep it on track. Especially after last week’s loss to Georgia, which was marred by penalties and undisciplined mistakes.

“If we’re gonna get this thing clicking, we need to get all 11 guys doing the little things right,” said junior left tackle Lee Ziemba.

And it starts with the penalties.

“They’re killing us. We’ve got to stop committing those errors,” said Ziemba, who jumped offside on Auburn’s final drive, further hurting its chances for the game-tying score. “It’s all about the fundamentals. If you do the fundamentals right, you’re not going to commit those penalties.”

Auburn was flagged nine times for 60 yards against Georgia.

“Very disappointed with the penalties,” head coach Gene Chizik said. “Those are undisciplined things that we have to get better at. We can’t, again, go into any game against any good football team and have as many penalties as we’ve had and expect to win.

“That was evident on the last drive, there were a couple penalties there that just put us in bad situations. So that’s disappointing, too.”

Over the last six games, in which the Tigers have gone 2-4, they have totaled 49 penalties for 354 yards.

“We’re trying to correct those,” offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn said Wednesday night. “The discipline part — just the overall execution of doing what we do. We’re trying to get those corrected before the next game.”

If the Tigers want to compete with Alabama next Saturday, that’s imperative. Especially on offense.

“They’re very talented,” Malzahn said of the Crimson Tide defense. “They’re very fast. Very rarely do they get out of position. They make you earn it. We’re going to have to do a good job.”

So Auburn spent Wednesday’s practice, the first since the loss in Athens, focusing on the “little things.”

“The big thing is looking at all the details, fixing the little mistakes that kind of hurt ourselves on,” quarterback Chris Todd said. “That’s something you really got to pay attention to, because they can make a bigger difference than you think, and that’s definitely important. And when you’re playing a really good football team, every little thing matters and so you really need to look at the details and fine-tune everything.”

McCalebb back?
Freshman running back Onterio McCalebb made his first appearance in two games in the loss to Georgia, but it was evident that the speedster wasn’t 100 percent recovered from an ankle injury that kept him out against Ole Miss and Furman.

McCalebb rushed 11 times for 71 yards against the Bulldogs, but was slow getting to the edge on the speed sweeps that normally separate him from Auburn’s other running backs, and opposing defenses.

Malzahn is hoping the bye week will help McCalebb get back to form.

“I think that helps,” the offensive coordinator said. “You can see what he did early in the season and the speed he was playing at early in the season. If we can get him back 100 percent before we play Alabama, that would be nice.“

McCalebb was all for the rest he’s already received the last couple days.

“It helped me a lot at practice today,” he said. “I felt real good.”

New go-to guy?
Ziemba also got on the stat sheet last Saturday against Georgia with his first career catch.

On a play that Auburn’s run a few times this season, the left tackle lined up in the slot as a receiver on third-and-3 from the Bulldogs’ 17-yard line midway through the third quarter.

After almost being sacked on the play, Todd threw to the only open Tiger he could find — Ziemba.

Of course, the O-lineman was not an eligible receiver, and Auburn was called for illegal touching, which Georgia declined.

Ziemba lost 3 yards on the play, but showed off his hands.

“He made a nice catch on it,” Todd laughed. “I was really waiting to see if he was going to break that.”

BCA gives AU passing grade
The manner in which Auburn conducted its search for a head football coach last December earned the school a passing grade in the Black Coaches & Administrator’s yearly report card, released Wednesday. But it wasn’t necessarily with flying colors.

Auburn received one A, three Bs and an F in the five categories designed to evaluate how colleges and universities are doing when it comes to interviewing and/or hiring minority candidates. That average left AU with a D overall.

The F came in the Affirmative Action category, which asks each institution to document the “affirmative action hiring policies and procedures the institution has.”

An A in that category means a school had a “highly detailed level of documented policies and procedures.” The BCA’s report card judges an F by a school having “no documentation of the policies and procedures at all.”

Auburn’s A came in the Communication category, meaning that Auburn had at least two communications with the BCA and/or the chair of the NCAA Minority Opportunity Interests Committee. The Bs came in the Hiring/Search Committee (20-29 percent of hiring/search committee were minorities), Candidates Interviewed (20-29 percent of candidates were minorities) and Reasonable Time (search/hiring process lasted between six and 13 days) categories.

In the 10 days between Tommy Tuberville’s resignation Dec. 3 and Chizik’s hiring Dec. 13, Auburn interviewed Buffalo head coach Turner Gill and Georgia assistant/defensive line coach Rodney Garner, both of whom are black.

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