Post Tagged with: "football preview"

2010 AU FOOTBALL PREVIEWS: Arkansas primed for bigger things in 2010

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the seventh in a series previewing Auburn’s 2010 football opponents. This week: Arkansas (Oct. 16). The series will run weekly.

There has, perhaps, been an unfair amount of pressure heaped on this year’s version of the Arkansas Razorbacks, as national pundits and experts seek a potential threat in the SEC West for the defending national champions, Alabama.

Auburn, from firsthand experience last year, certainly won’t argue against the Hogs.

Aside from the Tigers’ meltdown in Baton Rouge, La., against LSU, there was no team that thoroughly outplayed and dissected Auburn more in 2009 than Arkansas.

It was an ugly day in Fayetteville, as Ryan Mallett torched the Tigers with his arm, Michael Smith burned them with his speed on the outside, kick returner Dennis Johnson gashed the walk-on heavy Tigers’ special teams units and even the beleaguered Razorbacks’ defense stepped up, becoming the first team to bottle up Gus Malzahn’s high-flying offensive attack, as the Razorbacks went on to win, 44-23.

2010 AU FOOTBALL PREVIEWS: Plenty of weapons return for Phillips, Kentucky

Editor’s Note: This is the sixth in a series previewing Auburn’s 2010 football opponents. This week: Kentucky (Oct. 9). The series will run weekly.

From all indications, Joker Phillips has hit the ground running in his first season as the Kentucky head coach.

Now all he has to do, apparently, is distinguish himself from another hot new coach in the Bluegrass State, Louisville’s Charlie Strong.

“Charlie goes places in Kentucky, and they call him Joker,” Phillips joked with reporters at last week’s SEC meetings in Destin, Fla. “I go to some places that they call me Charlie.

“So I guess we all look alike.”

Fans will hopefully have things figured out by Sept. 4, when the two new coaches square off to open a season that neither hopes is a step backward from 2009.