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Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Highlights from Wednesday afternoon

It's been a long day, so I'm not transcribing anything tonight. I'll probably wish I had tomorrow.

First things first, a couple of links to my stories for Thursday.
* Feature on freshman linebacker Spencer Pybus, who might be facing a redshirt season because of depth. Then again, maybe he won't. Folks are talking him up around there. That's a nice story considering it went down to almost the last minute before Auburn gave him an offer.
* Notebook -- Leads with Drew Cole's move to safety, talks about James Swinton, Philip Pierre-Louis and Harry Adams and who is the fastest player on the team. Gets into injuries and some other stuff.

OK, some practice notes:
* Chris Todd and Kodi Burns didn't participate in the competitive drills this afternoon. Tommy Tuberville said they wanted to give them a break and also let Barrett Trotter and Neil Caudle get some reps in.
* Almost every big play I wrote down from 7-on-7 and 11-on-11 came with Neil Caudle at quarterback. That's both a good and bad thing.
The good: A well-placed 33-yard touchdown pass to Philip Pierre-Louis in 7-on-7; a well-placed 33-yard touchdown pass to James Swinton with Ryan Williams in coverage in 7-on-7; a perfectly thrown TD to Pierre-Louis of about 80 yards with D'Antoine Hood in coverage.
The bad: An ugly interception for a touchdown thrown out of his own end zone, caught by Josh Bynes around the 5 and returned for a walk-in TD; a deep ball to Rod Smith that Jerraud Powers made a nice play on and picked off at the goal line
* The Trotter plays I jotted down were a nice throw and catch where he hooked up with Tommy Trott in traffic for about a 20-yard gain and a nice throw to Derek Winter for a TD with D'Antoine Hood in coverage (I believe this was in 7-on-7).
* Watched the kickoff return drills a little closer than I have previously today. Pierre-Louis, Swinton and Harry Adams were the guys working there. I really like watching Pierre-Louis. He can flat out fly, but he's about 5-foot-nothing, 100-and-nothing. Maybe a faster version of Markeith Cooper if you remember him. I'll eat my hat if he doesn't play this year.
* Speaking of Pierre-Louis, he obviously had one of the better days. Aside from the long TD catch, the highlight for me was when he caught a short little pass and made Tray Blackmon fall down with a fake. Granted, the slippery playing surface from this morning's rainfall provided an assist. Still, the offensive guys gave Tray some grief over that one. It got a laugh out of me.
* In blue this afternoon: Mario Fannin (I don't think he did anything this afternoon, although he practiced some this morning) with a hamstring injury and Chris Evans. Out of blue and back for full participation were Harry Adams and Robert Dunn.
* Ben Tate didn't practice today. Tuberville said "he got his bell rung" in that collision I mentioned with Evans on Tuesday.
* Brad Lester and Tristan Davis rode stationary bikes during the afternoon practice. Tuberville said they could have practiced, but they're letting them recuperate for Saturday's scrimmage.
* Bart Eddins apparently injured his left shoulder sometime during practice. I didn't see it happen, but I saw him at the end of practice without his pads on (they were in shoulder pads and shorts this afternoon) and he'd apparently been icing the shoulder.
* It looks like Neiko Thorpe is in the lead to be Auburn's third corner. When they lined up in a nickel defense today, the DBs were Powers, McFadden, Thorpe, Etheridge and McNeil.
* You'll be glad to know that at the end of practice, Tuberville gathered everyone up and they held hands and sang Kumbaya. A particularly poignant moment was when Lee Ziemba, Ryan Pugh and Antonio Coleman sang in three-part harmony. Never one to miss an opportunity to brawl, though, Ziemba took his helmet off and cracked Coleman over the head with it when AC got out of tune in one of the choruses. Or maybe I'm making that up. You know us biased media people, always blowing things out of proportion.

Highlights of Tuberville's post-practice comments:
* Still no word from the Clearinghouse on Reggie Hunt, although it sounds like he thinks Hunt is going to make it into school.
* They'll be doing a light practice tomorrow afternoon. It's scheduled for 4:15, but at this point, I don't like telling anyone a set practice time. They seem to change on a daily basis, sometimes several times in a day. I think he said they'll do some walk-through stuff and work on the kicking game mostly.
* He said they've only received about half of the summer school grades and they haven't suffered an academic casualty yet.

I'm sure I'm forgetting something, but that's all I got for now.

1 comment:

The Panther Patriot said...

You'll be glad to know that at the end of practice, Tuberville gathered everyone up and they held hands and sang Kumbaya. A particularly poignant moment was when Lee Ziemba, Ryan Pugh and Antonio Coleman sang in three-part harmony. Never one to miss an opportunity to brawl, though, Ziemba took his helmet off and cracked Coleman over the head with it when AC got out of tune in one of the choruses. Or maybe I'm making that up. You know us biased media people, always blowing things out of proportion.

David, I almost choked on my morning coffee over this one! Nicely played!

I appreciate the info you post. I come here everyday to catch up on what's happening on the Plains. Excellent work.