I did not ever say anything about one of the greatest seasons in Auburn basketball history that will be completely forgotten. Bruce and the boys went 25-6 (the third best record in Auburn basketball history I think?) and 12-6 in the SEC and were looking at maybe winning another SEC tournament and making another deep run in the NCAA tournament. That season featured some of the most exciting games and maybe the greatest regular season run of wins I have ever seen in Auburn basketball. In one single stretch of games Auburn beat Ole Miss on the road in 2OTs, beat Kentucky at home with College Gameday in town, beat Arkansas on the road in OT, beat LSU in maybe the greatest basketball come back in Auburn history in OT and then finished the streak beating Bama in yet another OT game. Samir Doughty, Isaac Okoro, Danjel Purifoy, and Austin Wiley. Absolute Auburn greats gone and forgotten.
The 2020 baseball season was wiped out and then we got Gus Malzahn's last excruciating season on the plains that included exactly one big win over an overrated LSU team. Unfortunately for Auburn things did not get any better as we went into 2021. To ring in the new year we got a typical Malzahn-ian bowl effort. He was not there but the team played like he was losing ugly to Northwestern. Harsin and company did the best they could to save the recruiting class but it is not a strong class. Unfortunately this part will continue to hurt Auburn, Gus' declining recruiting efforts will continue to hamper Auburn's championship hopes long after his departure. I do not want to take away anything from a great start last night but the bottom line for Auburn football is this coming recruiting class is critical.
Back to the start of 2021... even the great Bruce Pearl could not stop the downward trend of Auburn sports after COVID-19 started. The basketball Tigers were just too young and the pathetic NCAA kept super recruit Sharife Cooper out over a third of the season. The young Auburn basketball team could just never get going. The only high point was maybe the greatest first game in Auburn basketball history put up by Cooper in a loss to a really good Bama team. He was amazing putting up 26 points and nine assists in his debut and almost carrying Auburn to the win. The women's basketball team went winless in the SEC and then the baseball and softball teams both crashed and burned as well. It has just been one thing after another for Auburn sports since the start of the pandemic.
The hits continued off the field with the NIL (name, image, and likeness) ruling by the Supreme Court and the full inception of the transfer portal. These two things will continue to effect college football going forward. The NIL stuff was really no surprise as the greed surrounding college sports and the millions of dollars taken in by conferences, schools, and coaches continued to rise. It was only natural that the players were going to be part of it sooner or later. The complete idiocy of the NCAA as an organization contributed to the issue coming to a head sooner rather than later. The biggest problem I have with the whole thing is the complete lack of any real rules regarding uh anything. College football and basketball have pretty much become professional minor league so I am to the point I wish it would become official so we could have some rules. College sports especially football just look like professional wrestling to me with the championship contenders picked before the season starts.
That is all external to the Auburn athletic department in these trying times but unfortunately Auburn seemingly cannot keep it together internally either. First you have lame duck president Jay Gogue continuing to lead Auburn nowhere as he has done his entire career. Literally the next time Auburn is PROACTIVE about anything will be the FIRST TIME. The latest incident on his watch is evidently many of Auburn's coaches revolting against athletic director Allen Greene. Greene while appearing to get it right with Harsin has evidently gone completely overboard cutting costs in the Auburn athletic department further hindering Auburn's collective sports teams who as I just described are up against it already. Things have gotten so bad that Gogue moved Auburn COO Lt. Gen. Burgess into the athletic department. You just have to shake your head... You just do not hear sh!t like this happening in Athens or Tuscaloosa. I mean things are bad enough and we now have a civil war in the Auburn AD???
After ALL OF THIS, we finally got into SEC media days and Auburn fans were looking at putting some of this behind us and trying to get fired up about the upcoming football season. New Auburn head coach Bryan Harsin took his turn on the last day and ended up putting his foot in his mouth and fumbling the ball on Auburn's COVID vaccination plan. I guess all of us can continue to argue amongst ourselves about which is worse, the disease or the vaccine, but in my opinion a sports team cannot. You have a better chance of having a good season and winning by getting your vaccinations and Harsin basically admitted he had not gotten his and that Auburn was behind most of the conference. This officially ended his honeymoon with many Auburn fans and started literally countless bitter arguments between Auburn fans on the subject especially in nameless and faceless forums.
Harsin and several of Auburn's coaches then contracted COVID-19 during preseason practice. He also hamstringed the media even worse than Malzahn giving them the same limited bland short practice looks plus banning them from discussing injuries. I am so tired of college coaches and their petty dictatorships. Every big time college football program wants to blather on so much about the NFL well then how about you act more like the NFL on practice looks and injury reports. The college football preseason is just so much blathering on about nothing that it is not any fun at all anymore. Nobody wants to hear the 1000th guess about Auburn or anybody else's season. That is why there is no preview here on this site. You just have to endure till you finally get to the start of the season.
And that is where we finally got to last night and it was Auburn's first great sports moment since this whole pandemic started... A beautiful day, the Tiger Walk, a full stadium, the flight of the eagle... AND FOR THE FIRST TIME IN OVER A DECADE NO GUS MALZAHN OFFENSE. I mean I think I know now a little bit about how it feels to get out of prison (-: I will just quote a good friend of mine here on the offense last night: "You saw clean substitutions, very few penalties, decisive play calling, throwing intermediate passes, utilizing the middle of the field (on those passes), and personnel groupings that did not defy logic." I would add did not defy logic or TIP OFF EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO RUN. Things may go bad for this football team but let me be clear the team IS better right now.
Obviously Akron remains one of the worst teams in the country but you can blow out a team and still not get anything out of it ala Malzahn. Gus would have run the ball 70 times in that game and gotten about the same score but we would be no better off. Harsin and company were much more balanced which as I have screamed the last 10 years helps you get better!!! You have to throw the ball in lesser games to be any good at it in the big games which is a lesson Gus never learned. I did see his big win at Central Florida and all I have say to that and to the other success he will have there is his crap will work at a lesser level especially when you are the big fish in that small pond. The fact remains is he was done after the 2017 season and Auburn is much better off regardless of how things go.
The stats speak for themselves. Again Akron is awful but to play nearly perfect in any football game is a good thing. Bo Nix who by the way has never been the problem was... almost perfect going 20-22 for 275 yards and three touchdowns. Tank Bigsby and Jaquez Hunter both had over a hundred yards rushing. Shaun Shivers was finally used as he is supposed to be used which is as a change of pace back and that resulted in him getting a touchdown running and receiving the ball. The ball was SPREAD AROUND to nine different receivers (has that ever happened at Auburn?). Four Auburn receivers had three or more catches and another one had two. The young Auburn wide receiver corps looked very good. Senior Shedrick Jackson led the way with five catches. Finally the much maligned (I am one of those) Auburn offensive line powered the whole thing.
I also want to point out again the BALANCE. In a game like this Auburn ran the ball 31 times for 315 yards and passed the ball 27 times for almost 300 yards. I know many people are like so what? For those people I challenge them to google every nothing game like this under Malzahn or frankly under pretty much any past Auburn coach. I bet you will not find a game remotely similar to this in these type games. I have said over and over in this blog that I hate this attitude that Auburn always has to be a running team. I hate it because any successful team outside a few rare exceptions must be a BALANCED team. Look no further than the football factory to our west for proof of this point. It is also again key to maintain that balance in games like this. IT WAS SO REFRESHING. The "cherry on top" was the coaching staff letting backup quarterback T.J. Finley throw the ball with the third team in garbage time. It is a little thing but it is a huge thing because your backup QB needs it so bad.
I have spent so much time on the offense for obvious reasons but I also thought the defense looked better as well. Many people started hating on Kevin Steele when it looked like he might be the next Auburn head coach but I disliked him long before that and stated it many times in this blog. I thought he was so overrated. He did a decent job but it was mainly against poor passing teams. He absolutely got roasted every time Auburn played a good passing team, every time. I like Derek Mason's attacking style much better. Auburn will still get burned plenty but hopefully they can also make big plays more as well. The player of the night for me was senior T.D. Moultry who has seemingly been in exile the last two seasons. He ended the night with seven tackles, three for losses including a sack. I still think parts of Auburn's defensive line are undersized and will struggle against good teams but the back seven looks rock solid.
All in all, for really the first time since the pandemic hit it was truly great to be an Auburn Tiger. That was what last night was all about. There will be losses and tough times this season but hopefully there will also be a few big wins as well. I am already fired up for what to me will be Auburn's biggest game of the season at Penn State in less than two weeks. I cannot remember Auburn playing a big-time Big Ten team in the regular season... EVER. This is a once-in-a-lifetime type matchup. I love our rivalries but for this year I think this Penn State game is the big one. There will be plenty of time to talk about the conference season but right now the countdown is on to what will hopefully be a truly special game Saturday September 18, 2021. First up though is another scrimmage against Alabama State and my hope is the Auburn football team can do the same thing in that game next Saturday they did last night, play good and get better as a team.
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