The finals in the women's 200m backstroke will be held at 10:03 p.m. Eastern. Auburn's Kirsty Coventry and Margaret Hoelzer will both compete. Coventry qualified first and Hoelzer fifth.

Auburn's Cesar Cielo will also swim in the 50m freestyle finals at 11:39 p.m. He broke an Olympic record in the semifinals and also set Americas and South American records.

Also, former Auburn track star Marc Burns (Trinidad and Tobago) ran in the 100 meters tonight, placing second in his heat and advancing to today's quarterfinals at 7:45 p.m. He's the first of 12 Auburn track folks who'll compete in Beijing.

More Friday...

Today's practice was incredibly boring...at least for me.
There was no 11-on-11. No Brad Lester, Tristan Davis or Ben Tate. It was exactly what Tommy Tuberville predicted Wednesday that it would be -- a light day.

At the end of practice, they cut watermelons and the players ate up. Oddly, some of them were trying to make sure some of us reporters there took a slice. I'm by no means against eating a nice chunk of watermelon, but they didn't bring that stuff out there for me to eat, so I didn't take any.

They practice Friday at 9:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. (remember I operate on eastern time) for the last two-a-day practice of the preseason. The practices will be at the football complex and are scheduled to be closed. They'll scrimmage Saturday (also closed)
and start classes on Monday -- which will be the first day off of the preseason. I can't wait. I haven't packed a dish or a stitch of clothing yet and I have to start moving very, very soon.

So with that said, I haven't got much to offer today. Spoke with Neil Caudle, D'Antoine Hood and Tommy Trott today after practice. Sat and listened to Trott talk with Jay G. Tate for a long time and really liked the kid. I'm gonna try not to steal much from that, but Jay's on the clock. Couple more days and he loses all proprietary rights to the material from his Montgomery guy. Trott looks just like former Georgia quarterback Joe Tereshinski to me. Not a dead ringer, but fairly close. It's probably the haircuts...those young cutters with their full heads of hair.











Tommy T. (right)
Joe T. (left)

Anyway, I'll head over in the morning (actually in like six hours) and we'll see what they have to say then.

Today's stories:
* Lead on Auburn's receivers
* Notebook leading with Tommy Tuberville's reaction to the new SEC 15-year deal with CBS. (Like I said, it was an extremely slow day).

I saw where Rivals upgraded Auburn commit Raymond Cotton's rating to four stars today. They also rate him as the No. 12 dual-threat QB prospect. I was thinking about how rare it was for an Auburn commit to receive a bid to the Elite 11 quarterback camp and I actually dug up a list of all 10 Elite 11 classes thus far. Auburn has had one player go to the camp -- Neil Caudle in 2005.

For whatever reason, Auburn has rarely gotten the huge QB signees in my 20-something years of keeping up with the Tigers. I've always wondered why that is. I guess it's because Auburn has so often been close to the vest in its offensive approach -- which might be why they always seemed to bring in great running backs. In contrast, Georgia has three former Elite 11 QBs on its current roster -- Matthew Stafford, Joe Cox and Logan Gray -- and two more commits out of this Elite 11 class in Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger.

Obviously if you look at some of the names on there, it's not a rock-solid predictor of collegiate success. But there are some pretty stinking good players who have participated in that thing since it started a decade ago. If my count is right (and if Jarrett Lee winds up as LSU's QB) it looks like four starters for Auburn's 2008 opponents are former Elite 11 QBs -- Stafford, Lee, Jevan Snead and Jonathan Crompton.

Here's the list. I'd acknowledge where I found it if I could only remember:

1999
Brock Berlin
Jeff Smoker
Chris Rix
Casey Clausen
Matt Cassell
Roman Ybarra
Matt Lovecchio
Chance Mock
Jon VanCleave
John Rattay
Zac Wasserman

2000
Derek Anderson
Nic Costa
Kellen Clemens
Brodie Croyle
Billy Hart
Matt Leinart
Ingle Martin
Adrian McPherson
Kyle Orton
Casey Paus
D.J. Shockley
Paul Troth

2001
Ben Olson
Chris Olson
Drew Olson
Justin Zwick
Tyler Palko
Trent Edwards
Vince Young
Reggie McNeal
Gavin Dickey
Evan Kraky
Will Proctor
Ryan O'Hara

2002
Michael Affleck
Dennis Dixon
Tommy Grady
Robert Lane
Chris Leak
Justin Midgett
Blake Mitchell
T.C. Ostrander
Clayton Richard
Jamarcus Russell
Andre Woodson
Kyle Wright

2003
Rhett Bomar
John David Booty
A.J. Bryant
Kirby Freeman
Brian Hildebrand
Cornelius Ingram
Nate Longshore
Tony Morelli
Chase Patton
Bobby Reid
Matt Tuiasosopo
Drew Weatherford

2004
Harrison Beck
Jake Christensen
Joe Cox
Jonathan Crompton
Jonathan Garner
Ryan Perrilloux
Kyle Reed
Mark Sanchez
Rob Schoenhoft
Willie Tuitama

2005
Matthew Stafford
Tim Tebow
Kevin Riley
Cody Hawkins
Jevan Snead
Josh Freeman
Mitch Mustain
Pat Devlin
Jake Locker
Isiah Williams
Neil Caudle
Zach Frazer

2006
John Brantley
Stephen Garcia
Willie Korn
Ryan Mallett
Rontrell Bailey
Aaron Corp
Logan Gray
Peter Lalich
Jarrett Lee
Brock Mansion
Keith Nichol
Tyrod Taylor

2007
Nick Crissman
Dayne Crist
Blaine Gabbert
Mike Glennon
Jacory Harris
Star Jackson
Landry Jones
Andrew Luck
E.J. Manuel
Kyle Parker
Sean Renfree
John Wienke

2008
Tajh Boyd
Richard Brehaut
Allan Bridgford
Raymond Cotton
Garrett Gilbert
Andrew Maxwell
A.J. McCarron
Zach Mettenberger
Aaron Murray
Bryn Renner
Tom Savage
Eugene Smith

Link to story on official Auburn site.

Here's the gist:
Cesar Cielo and Kirsty Coventry broke two more Olympic records in event preliminaries in Beijing. Cielo's big event is the 50-meter freestyle and he broke the record in his heat. It fell in the next heat, but he still tied an Americas record and broke the South American record in the event.

Coventry set a new Olympic record in qualifying for the 200-meter backstroke semis.

In all, six Auburn swimmers advanced to an event semifinal today:
Cielo (50m free)
Coventry (200m back)
Margaret Hoelzer (200m back)
George Bovell (50m free)
Gideon Louw (50m free)
Fred Bousquet (100m fly)

The 50m free folks competed at 10:03 tonight (9:03 central). Hoelzer and Coventry swim in the same heat in the 200 back semis, tonight at 10:32 (9:32 central). Bousquet will be the last of the AU swimmers to compete tonight at 11:24 (10:24 central).

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.

Auburn's Cesar Cielo won bronze tonight in the 100-meter freestyle, making it seven medals now won by current and former Auburn swimmers (a new AU record for a single Olympics). In other words, right this second, Auburn is tied with Great Britain for 10th in the medal count. Couple more and they'll tie Germany for ninth -- and I'm betting they win at least two more when Margaret Hoelzer and Kirsty Coventry square off in the women's 200-meter backstroke.

Cielo's a bad man. His time of 47.67 seconds in tonight's event was a new record for a South American swimmer. I wrote a story about him this summer around the time of the U.S. Olympic Trials (although he's Brazilian). He twice won NCAA Swimmer of the Year, won 10 NCAA titles and 19 SEC titles, all Auburn records. So he decided to forego his senior year at Auburn to go pro. That's how good he is -- he's skipping a year of eligibility to become a professional swimmer.

Here's where AU's medal count stands right now:
Kirsty Coventry, Zimbabwe: Silver x 3
Fred Bosquet, France: Silver
Cesar Cielo, Brazil: Bronze
Margaret Hoelzer, United States: Bronze
Matt Targett, Australia: Bronze

Y'all see where Josh Jarboe is going to Troy? He was one of the top high school receivers in the country last year and signed with Oklahoma, but got himself in a little trouble before he got there. A little more after he got there, including a freestyle rap on Youtube that became a little Internet sensation. He was kicked off the team not long after that thing began making the rounds. I started to embed it in a post, but after watching it I realized my boss would have a coronary (it's got a little bad language).

Instead, here's a highlight reel of Jarboe. He's a very talented player. I know Georgia fans were excited about the possibility of him going to UGA last year before he committed to Oklahoma. I'm guessing they're glad he opted to go elsewhere, especially in light of the other disciplinary issues they've had this year. Besides, they signed two super-talented receivers this year in A.J. Green and Tavarres King anyway.

* Practice was originally supposed to be closed this morning, but it wasn't. No idea what was going on with that change. I kinda thought they might start closing it down after yesterday, which would be understandable. As long as they're open, though, I'm gonna be there and write what I see. They practiced at the football complex instead of the intramural fields and we watched from the railings with the fans who were in attendance.
* Drew Cole has moved from cornerback to safety. I spoke with him after practice about the move and will probably have something on that in tomorrow's paper.
* Wearing non-contact jerseys today: Robert Dunn, Mario Fannin, Harry Adams, Chris Evans
* Didn't see Brad Lester or Ben Tate out there
* Spoke with or listened to a ton of guys after the morning session: Don Dunn, Greg Knox, Chris Slaughter, James Swinton, Tray Blackmon, Zac Etheridge, Cole, Zach Clayton and Barrett Trotter. Should have some good stuff coming from those guys in the next few days.
* Slaughter and Swinton continue to receive a lot of praise for their performances in camp. Slaughter made a beautiful diving catch on a Kodi Burns bomb today in practice. We'll talk to Tommy Tuberville after the evening practice.

Ex-Auburn swimmer Kirsty Coventry won her third silver medal of these Olympics tonight, placing second behind Australia's Stephanie Rice in the 200-meter individual medley. Both swimmers beat Rice's previous world record, with Coventry clocking a 2:08.59 and Rice a 2:08.45.

Coventry has also won silvers in 400m IM and 100m backstroke in Beijing. She also won three medals in 2004, giving her six for her career -- three more than the previous record for an Auburn swimmer.

In other Auburn Olympics news, Eric Shanteau, who gained international attention when he announced that he'd been diagnosed with testicular cancer after the Olympic Trials, failed to qualify for the finals in the 200m breastroke. He clocked a personal-best time, but finished in 10th place in 2:10.10. He needed to place eighth to advance to the finals.

Also, Auburn's Matt Targett and Cesar Cielo qualified for the 100m freestyle finals by finishing fourth and eighth, respectively, in the semis. I believe that finals race is Thursday.

From Auburn's release, previewing Wednesday's action:
Incoming freshman Arianna Vanderpool-Wallace gets things started at 5:39 a.m. CT as she competes in the 100m freestyle prelim. Wallace will swim in the third heat, occupying lane four, and enters with a seed time of 56.01.

Former Auburn swimmers get in on the action beginning at 6:22 a.m. CT as two are set to compete in the men’s 200m individual medley preliminary. Nick Bovell (Trinidad & Tobago) goes first in heat two, swimming in lane two, with a seed time of 2:03.02. Jeremy Knowles (Bahamas) follows in heat three, occupying lane eight, with a seed time of 2:02.79.

Rounding out the Auburn contingent in the session will be incoming freshman Stephanie Horner. She is part of the pool of swimmers available for the Canadian 800m freestyle relay. Canada is scheduled to swim at 7:06 a.m. CT, going in lane one in the first heat. The team enters with a seed time of 8:04.19.

Schedule

Here's what Auburn offensive coordinator Tony Franklin had to say to reporters after Tuesday's practice:

On Saturday’s scrimmage:
Saturday I thought we got a lot accomplished, a lot of guys made plays. It seems like six weeks ago that Saturday happened, so my memory fails me on exactly what happened. There’s been a lot of film since there. We had good tempo as the scrimmage progressed. Early on, we didn’t have real good tempo and that’s because we’re a little slower out here right now than what we normally will be. But trying to get through two-a-days and trying to make sure that the defense is able to accomplish what they need to accomplish … so Saturday took a while for us to get our tempo the way that we want it. But overall we played hard and we had some good playmakers that made plays, so I was pleased with what happened.

On the quarterback race:
I’ll tell ya what’s fun. This has been the most fun for me about watching the quarterbacks. It’s like a great heavyweight championship fight and one guy lands what you think is a knockout blow and the other guy falls against the ropes and 5 seconds later he comes back and he lands a blow that you think’s gonna knock the other one out. And it happens every day to where one guy will make a throw that just blows your mind and then the other one will walk in and he’ll trump it. And that’s phenomenal because it shows that they’re both competitors, that neither one of them wither from the competition, they step up to it. And I think, again, like I’ve said many times, the longer this thing progresses, the more that it becomes such a wonderful problem because they’ve both risen to the occasion, they’ve both gotten better and I’m very tickled with how they’ve both played.

On if he still thinks it will be the week before Louisiana-Monroe that they’ll name a starter:
I don’t have a clue. I don’t have a clue.

If they decide to split it up, will they even announce a starter:
I don’t know, it’s something coach Tuberville and I will sit down and talk about and see what we feel like is best for the team. Like I told you I guess the last time that we talked is that it’s something that right now I’d have a very difficult time doing that because they’re both really good. They’re both making plays, they’re both getting better at their weaknesses. Kodi’s gotten a lot better throwing, Chris has gotten a lot better running, so it’s really like I said. It’s one of those things that the harder it gets, the tougher the competiton gets, then the better that they both get. So it’s been really a blessing for both of them. They’ve both become better.

On what he’s seen from the receivers:
I see talent that’s good enough to win in this league and I see it our job to make ‘em better. That’s what we’re hired to do and I’m very pleased with it. They’ve stepped up, they’ve gotten better. They’re a lot better now than they were at the end of the spring. Greg and Steve have both done an incredible job with coaching those guys and getting them better. The details they’ve paid attention to and they’re good enough to win in this league. It’s our job just to make sure we do a good job coaching them.

On receivers that have stood out:
You know it’s really several that stand out. The biggest probably most pleasant thing that’s happened so far has been Chris Slaughter. He’s a guy that you can tell his talent, but the work ethic and the day in and day out grind of doing the right things and making plays and all that, just I never saw it. And from the day that we started, the first practice that we had, he was like a different person. I keep waiting for it to fall off and it hasn’t, so that’s been probably the most pleasant surprise. Gabe McKenzie’s been another pleasant surprise. Gabe has caught, he’s had very few drops, if any, in competition. That’s very pleasant. His routes are still not as crisp as they need to be, but he has stepped up and shown more promise.

On how many freshmen might play:
Well, the running back probably, Eric, will probably play. Philip will probably play. Derek is a question mark. Not really 100 percent sure yet whether he will or not. Darvin will probably play. So those guys are definitely gonna play.

On the importance of having Jason Bosley back in practice:
It means we’ve got a snap, you know? We had a day where he and Pugh both were out and it was a challenge, as you saw Tyronne getting his first time ever at center. But it’s a lot for leadership and it helps getting Pugh back getting reps at tackle too. But it’s big. Your center on this team plays a huge role, so it’s good to have him back.

(I can’t hear this question well, but I think the reporter asked if Barrett Trotter or Neil Caudle has separated himself as the No. 3 quarterback):
Not really. I mean they’re both good enough. It’s just a matter of probably just making a decision one day as to which one that we’re gonna use.