AUBURN | Auburn is coming off back-to-back series losses to top three teams.

But the most important outcome from the contests against No. 1 Tennessee and No. 3 Arkansas is that the Tigers weren’t swept and came into Sunday with a chance to win both series.

That Joseph Gonzalez got knocked around for five runs in 2.2 innings by the Razorbacks yesterday happens. It’s baseball. AU’s sophomore ace has been one of the SEC’s best starters over the last month and one rough outing doesn’t change that.

Another of those it’s baseball quirks happened during the Hawgs’ series. Auburn hit seven home runs, six solo, that accounted for eight runs batted in, and Arkansas hit four home runs that accounted for 11 RBI.

Arkansas hit a 2-run homer in the sixth, 3-run shot in the seventh and another in the eighth of Friday night’s 11-8 comeback win. The Razorbacks hit a 3-run home run that proved to be the difference in Sunday’s 7-4 series-clinching win.

Credit the Hawgs for some clutch swings.

Auburn now enters the final two series of the regular season 32-16 overall and 13-11 in the conference.The Tigers’ final two league opponents, Alabama at home and Kentucky on the road, are a combined 19-29 in the SEC.

If Auburn plays well, it’s in position to win both series and potentially finish with 17 or more conference wins and host an NCAA Regional for the first time since 2010.

That would be a huge accomplishment for a team that was picked last in the SEC West by the league coaches and didn’t have any players selected preseason first- or second-team All-SEC.

The Tigers will have to play well. The Auburn-Alabama series is usually very competitive despite where both teams are in the standings and the Wildcats are 20-10 at home including a huge series win over the Volunteers last weekend.

The opportunity is there for this Auburn baseball team, but they’ll have to seize it.

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In today’s musical journey, we go back 52 years to the day a song titled American Woman, which was written by a band from Canada about Canadian women hit No. 1 in America. On May 9, 1970, the song American Woman by the Guess Who rose to the top spot on the Billboard 100. The music and lyrics for American Woman were improvised during a concert at a curling rink in Ontario. Randy Bachman replaced a broken string on his guitar during a break and started playing a new riff as he tuned it. His fellow band members quickly joined him on stage and started playing along including Burton Cummings, who quickly came up with the opening lyric, “American woman, stay away from me.” They found a kid in the audience that was recording a bootleg copy of the concert and listened back to the cassette so they could write down the lyrics and wouldn’t forget. Cummings said in a later interview about the lyrics that he was thinking that he prefers Canadian women because American women grow up quicker, which makes them dangerous. He has also called it an antiwar protest song. It includes the lyric, “I don't want your war machines, I don't want your ghetto scenes.”

The Guess Who got their start in Winnipeg in the late 1950’s with most of the regulars joining a band called Chad Allen and the Reflections in 1962, which became Chad Allen and the Expressions in 65. They had a minor hit in 1965 with a cover of Shakin’ All Over, which their American label disguised by crediting it to Guess Who? as a publicity stunt to try and tie the song to a British Invasion group like the Beatles. The band started getting introduced as The Guess Who, which prompted the name change. Cummings joined the band in 1966, which already included Bachman, Garry Peterson (drums) and Jim Kale (bass). A 1969 album, Wheatfield Soul, included a top 10 single, These Eyes. In addition to the title track, the album American Woman also included two other hits — No Time and No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature. Bachman left the group in 1970 and formed Bachman-Turner Overdrive, which became a successful rock band. The Guess Who continued recording and touring with a number of different lineups, producing 22 albums through 2018. The Guess Who were inducted into the Canadian Music Hall of Fame in 1987.