No time for Auburn to rest as MSU looms
It was clearly a Sunday at the Auburn Athletic Complex — that much was clear by the half-full parking lot and the dimmed offices.
Yet to a senior such as center Ryan Pugh, it felt like a Tuesday. But with no classes on the schedule today because of the Labor Day holiday, the Tigers were about to have “two Sunday practices in a row,” he said.
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Such is the relative calamity that ensues when the rigid routines of a major college football program are thrown off by a game such as Thursday night’s, when Auburn travels to Mississippi State for a primetime, nationally televised SEC opener.
“You have to be a little creative in how you want to do some scheduling,” coach Gene Chizik said. “You’ve got to be smart in terms of what did you come away with last night in terms of bumps and bruises. All of those things come into play, but you’ve got to be smart in how you proceed.”
It’d be short-sighted to think Auburn is being thrown for a loop by this quirk in the schedule. The game has been set for the 6:30 p.m. Thursday timeslot since January, and the Tigers certainly weren’t preparing for just Arkansas State through the first month of fall practice.
Mississippi State coach Dan Mullen said he drew up his plan for this particular week during the summer and then “put it to the side.” He unveiled it only after the Bulldogs routed Memphis, 49-7, on Saturday.
“When we came into work today, everybody’s on the same page ready to go for this game,” he said Sunday.
It’s just different, especially for the bevy of newcomers who will not only be faced with a short week of preparation, but also their first road experience as a college athlete. This is not new to Auburn’s juniors or seniors, who suffered an ugly Thursday-night loss at West Virginia in 2008, but it is something new for this coaching staff, which faced a relatively ho-hum slate in its first season together.
The exposure that comes from being the only major game on national TV makes up for it, Chizik said. The benefits it has toward the Tigers’ push to repeat as one of the top recruiting schools in the nation are intangible, and the platform will be something they use in their pitch to remaining, uncommitted prospects, Chizik said.
Beforehand, though, there are some kinks Auburn will have to overcome before it embarks on one of its toughest road trips of the season.
“It’s going to be all mental,” defensive end Antoine Carter said. “We just got to get off our feet, get rest when we can and when we’re in here in the film room, meeting room and out on the practice field, you’ve got to be focused.
“You’ve got to learn fast, study more and try to get things in as fast as you can.”
What Auburn will see in film room over the next few days is a Mississippi State team that had as impressive of an opening weekend as anyone in the SEC. The Bulldogs clicked with their two-quarterback system to the tune of 372 passing yards, 569 overall, in front of a jazzed-up, cowbell-ringing crowd.
This is a new era of excitement for Mississippi State fans, who gobbled up season tickets in record numbers before the season and are expected to ring their bells loud enough Thursday so the rest of the country can hear through the TV.
“(Mullen) has done a very nice job, there’s no question,” Chizik said. “They’re a different football team today than they were a year ago.”
Auburn is too, of course, yet the same problems that bothered it during the 2009 season crept up repeatedly in what was otherwise a solid win against Arkansas State.
The defense surrendered 323 passing yards, penalties lingered from start to finish and ball security became a major issue during a tumultuous five-minute stretch early in the third quarter. These are problems that Chizik called “fixable.”
He and his coaching staff just have a much tighter deadline to get the job done.
“You can’t do too much, yet you can’t do too little,” he said. “We’ve got a very limited amount of time to prepare.
“It’s a challenging week.”
agribble@oanow.com | 737-2561
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