AUBURN BASEBALL: Pawlowski era begins with fall practice

The John Pawlowski era officially began at Auburn on Tuesday as the Tiger baseball team began fall practice.

A two-hour afternoon workout began six weeks of fall practice for the Tigers under their new coach.

Pawlowski, who compiled a 338-192-1 record over the past nine seasons at the College of Charleston, said the practice time would be a learning experience for everyone.

“Any time there’s a change, it’s an adjustment for everyone,” Pawlowski said. “It’s an adjustment for the players that have been here, for the new players and obviously for the coaching staff. Any time there’s change you go through a learning period. We’re going to learn together and go through this together.”

And bringing all those new faces together for the start of practice has Pawlowski excited.

“Day 1 and certainly a lot of people are ready for it to be here, and it felt like it took a while to get here,” he said. “There’s a lot of new faces, a new coaching staff and a lot of excitement.”

Taking over a team that failed to make the SEC Tournament in all four of previous coach Tom Slater’s years on the Plains, Pawlowski said the goal for fall practice — and for the 2009 season — would be instilling his core values in the team.

“I definitely think the priority is setting our standard of how we’re going to play,” he said. “We’re going to play hard for nine innings, play with excitement and play with passion. Once we’ve done that, then we can set where we want to be.

“Obviously, the SEC Tournament is a priority and our priorities include competing on a national level.”

Even before the start of practice two priorities emerged.

“The biggest thing we have to do is see what we’ve got,” Pawlowski said. “We’ve got to address needs. One area I’m going to challenge is, we’ve got to get better on our pitching staff. And we’re going to have to figure out who’s going to be our shortstop.
Someone’s going to have to emerge there.

“This isn’t like Major League Baseball. You can’t trade away your players for other players you need. You can move forward and progress with the players you have here at Auburn.”

Practices are open to the public, and the Tigers will hold scrimmages Friday at 3 p.m., Saturday at 11 a.m. and Sunday at noon.

Pawlowski encourages fans coming for Saturday’s Auburn-LSU football game to stop by the morning scrimmage.

Practice is tentatively slated to wrap up Oct. 30, and the Tigers will open the 2009 season Feb. 20 against Elon at 3 p.m. at Plainsman Park.

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