TAMPA, Fla. — Playing a position as coveted as left tackle, junior Lee Ziemba will likely get a good, long look from NFL scouts at some point in the future.

When asked if he had thought about entering the NFL Draft a year early, Ziemba said he hadn’t thought about it.

“I’m focusing on the bowl game right now,” Ziemba said. “That’s something that’s in the future that we’ll have to look at but I’m not focused on that right now. I’m focused on playing Northwestern and beating them.”

The 6-foot-8, 308-pound Ziemba had a bounce-back year after offseason knee surgery. The junior extended his starting streak to 37 games and earned second-team All-SEC honors from the coaches and an honorable mention from the Associated Press.

Ziemba is ranked the 10th-best offensive tackle in the 2011 class by NFLDraftScout.com.

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• Auburn coaches have had plenty of praise for Northwestern quarterback Mike Kafka, a fifth-year senior who earned second-team All-Big Ten honors. Kafka threw for 2,898 yards and 12 touchdowns this year, completing 65.7 percent of his passes. A mobile quarterback, he added 265 yards and seven touchdowns on the ground. “(Kafka) throws the ball as good as anybody,” Auburn safeties coach Tommy Thigpen said. “We saw (Jevan) Snead against Ole Miss and we thought he had a really quick release. This guy’s release is just as quick as the Snead kid’s. So it’s going to be a challenge for our football team because there’s a lot of route timing, a lot of times he throws the ball to the receivers before they come out of their routes. They’re a really polished football team.”

• Northwestern doesn't remind cornerbacks coach Phillip Lolley of anyone Auburn's faced this year. "Maybe Mississippi State," he said. "They know how to throw the football, I can tell you that. They throw it around pretty good and they run the football through one-back stuff and do a really good job with that. A lot of zone stuff, what I call stretch. They’re able to read out of the quarterbacks throw of the ball and they can run the ball. They don’t mind tucking and running with it so it presents a challenge when you can spread that many people out. I’d say they probably get empty more than anyone we’ve played this year. Probably be their No. 1 set. They spread you out and make you play."

• Auburn has a few more bodies at its disposal in the secondary to try to stop Northwestern's passing game. D'Antoine Hood is looking better after struggling with an ankle injury all season. Safety Drew Cole, who missed the majority of the year with a major ankle injury, is also an option.

• Anthony Gulley is another option. The wide receiver moved to cornerback before the Furman game. Coaches don't know if he'll stay there. "It will probably carry over to the spring," Lolley said. "Right now, we’re just trying to work him there and get as many reps there as we can. I told him it kind of reminds me of Travaris Robinson several years ago. Travaris Robinson, the same type of situation, was a wide receiver and everything and we brought him over and just started working with him. We didn’t know if that move would be permanent or not. It wound up being permanent and he got to play a little bit in the league. We’ll know this spring where we are with it. Right now, he’s picking it up real good."

• Northwestern dedicated its bowl performance to second-year defensive line coach Marty Long, who had emergency surgery earlier this month to remove a growth and will not make the trip to Tampa. The team got some good news Monday: The surgery went well and Long, despite some double vision, has been improving every day. “It breaks our heart that he cannot be here with us, but we’re thinking about him and praying for his speedy recovery,” Wildcats coach Pat Fitzgerald said. “Us not having him here, it’s like not having one of your family here. Our defensive line has done a great job lifting themselves up and working hard. When I walked down to the meeting room yesterday I saw all 18 defensive linemen down there running the meeting. That’s what you’re hoping to see from your seniors.”

• Thigpen agreed with Gene Chizik's contention that practice was better: "Guys flew around a lot better than it was yesterday. Yesterday, we was kind of sluggish and you could tell guys had been off. You could tell guys were a lot more crisp, guys looked a lot more rested, a lot more fresh, a lot more alert. Pleased, we still got a lot of little stuff to correct upon. For the majority of the part, it was a good day."

• Wide receivers coach Trooper Taylor had an opinion on practice too: "They're getting back in the swing of things. Today really looked like a practice we probably would have had at Auburn. I think coach has been trying to emphasize that nothing changes but the address."

• Thigpen used to coach on Urban Meyer's staff back when they were at Bowling Green. He was as shocked as anyone upon hearing the news that Meyer was taking a leave. "We know he was passionate at a young age," Thigpen said. "Urban runs probably a couple miles a day if I can remember. I never thought that he would be resigning at this point in his career. But if I know Urban, take some time off and he'll be back."

• RB Onterio McCalebb said his ankle is 100 percent. I'm sure he made sure to tape it Monday nonetheless.
  

• WR Derek Winter is a Tampa native. Although he hasn't done much this year (his one catch came against Furman), Chizik had good things to say about the sophomore. "This kid works," Chizik said. "He's the epitome of hard work. When you look at Auburn's creed, in there it talks about work, hard work. He is what the creed says and he is what Auburn believes in."

• Lots of good stuff about the similar tempos that Auburn and Northwestern run. I plan to write about that as my game advance. It was funny that Fitzgerald pointed out that both teams are coached by defensive-minded coaches but still have no-huddle offenses.

• Fitzgerald had a good quote about a strong academic school like Northwestern competing against top-notch competition: "To our coaching staff's credit, they have embraced and believe in what we are and what we stand for. We try to develop world-class student athletes and give a world-class student athlete experience. With that comes the expectation that we're going to well in the classroom. With 54 players above a 3.0 and team GPA of 2.98 and win eight football games and go 5-3 in our league shows that you can have that balance. You can have the best of both worlds, but it start and ends with recruiting. We've got to attract the right kind of young man that fits our football program. Our coaching staff has done a tremendous job. Once you have that, it's kind of a vacuum that pulls everybody up. The culture within our locker room is to do the right thing, not just on the field, not just socially, not just in the classroom, but all areas combined, and I'm very proud of that."

• I'll give an enthusiastic thumbs up to Skipper's Smokehouse here in Tampa. It might not look like much (as this photo suggests), but it was some good eatin'. I recommend the shrimp. It's off to a Tampa Bay Lightning game tonight. This Minnesota native is curious to see what an NHL game is like in Florida. I assume the ice will still be frozen.