Published Apr 25, 2022
BMatt’s Monday musings
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Bryan Matthews  •  AuburnSports
Senior Editor
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@BMattAU

AUBURN | A lot of good things happened at Plainsman Park this weekend.

A whole lot, in fact, but I’d like to start with Nate LaRue.

The Auburn junior watched as Ryan Dyal and veteran transfer Jake Wyandt started the first 21 games at catcher to start this season.

He finally took over the full-time starting job for the Texas A&M series only to see is batting average dip to .136 in conference games coming into the weekend.

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LaRue had already solidified AU’s defense behind the plate and has been praised repeatedly for his handling of the pitching staff. This weekend, he found his hitting stroke.

LaRue was 4 of 8 during the three-game sweep of South Carolina including a double, home run, stolen base and team-best five RBI.

With the game tied 3-3 Friday, LaRue threw out a runner trying to steal second base to end the sixth inning. AU scored a run in the seventh and two more in the eighth to clinch a 6-3 win.

Trailing 6-3 Saturday, LaRue was part of a four-run seventh inning, driving in the go-ahead run with two outs. In Sunday’s 2-0 shutout, LaRue drove in the winning run with a two-out double in the second and scored the second run on a Blake Rambusch RBI-single in the fifth.

“It’s a hard 180 from the past couple of weekends, I’ll tell you that,” said LaRue Sunday. “It feels good. I was seeing the ball real good this weekend. Me and Gabe (Gross) made some adjustments during the week in practice and stuff. I changed my bat out. I started using a two-piece instead of a one-piece. I think that helped a little bit too. And there were a whole lot of prayers asking for hits.”

There were plenty more outstanding performances this weekend including Rambusch, who batted .545 in the leadoff spot, and Sonny DiChiara, who hit .600 and drew three walks. But it was a trio of pitchers that really stood out.

Joseph Gonzalez threw 7.0 scoreless innings Sunday to earn the win. In his last three SEC starts, Gonzalez is 3-0 with a 1.13 ERA. Overall, the sophomore right-hander is second in the SEC with a 1.71 ERA

Carson Skipper and Blake Burkhalter were nothing short of amazing pitching in crunch time during all three games. Skipper earned the win Friday and totaled 3.1 scoreless innings with three strikeouts.

Burkhalter struck out seven in 3.2 innings and earned three saves to bring his season-total to an SEC-best 11. According to available records, it’s the first time in school history that a reliever has recorded a save in all three games of a series.

There was one other notable performance Sunday and it came from a player that wasn’t supposed to be in the lineup.

Mike Bello was a late substitute Sunday after Bobby Peirce became ill. Bello, a freshman, made the play of the game with his leaping grab of a fly ball over the right field wall in the sixth that would have been a two-run, game-tying home run.

Players stepping up like that in crucial situations are a sign of a good team, and that’s exactly what Auburn has become.

This is a team that’s steadily improved all season, and it will need to take another big step forward this week.

The Tigers play at Jacksonville State Tuesday night, a team it lost to 5-2 at Plainsman Park a month ago. Then it’s a three-game series at No. 1 Tennessee.

The Volunteers are 37-3 overall and 17-1 in the SEC, the best-ever start in league history. They’re coming off a three-game sweep of Florida in Gainesville, the first time that’s happened since 2013.

UT leads the league in batting average, home runs, runs, team ERA and strikeouts. UT is second in stolen bases and fourth in fielding.

Butch Thompson, Auburn’s seventh-year head coach, views this week’s road games as an opportunity.

“People have been telling me nobody can even stay on the same field with them,” said Thompson. “This is setting up a whole new week of challenges and this looks like a daunting task for the Auburn Tigers this coming week.

“We’ve got a tough road to hoe and we know that. But we’re excited about it too.”

***

In today’s musical journey, we go back 20 years to the untimely death of a founder of one of the greatest female groups of all time. On April 25, 2002, Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes of TLC was killed in a car accident while organizing charity work in Honduras. Lopes, driving a Mitsubishi Montero, swerved to avoid an oncoming car causing the vehicle to roll over several times and eject her. She died instantly of a fracture to the base of the cranium. Lopes was 30 years old.

Lisa Nicole Lopes was born in 1971 in Philadelphia. She began playing with a keyboard at age 5 and by age 10 formed a band with her two siblings, performing gospel music at local churches and events. She moved to Atlanta in 1990 to answer an open casting call for a new girl group. That’s where she met Tionne “T-Boz”Watkins and eventually Rozonda “Chilli” Thomas and formed TLC. Lopes got her nickname from New Edition’s Michael Bivins, who told her he was attracted to her left eye, which was more slanted than the right. Lopes liked to put a black stripe under her left eye to emphasize her nickname. They signed with Arista Records and immediately went to work on their debut album, Ooooooohhh… On the TLC Tip, which was released in 1992. It was an instant success with three top 10 hits including Baby-Baby-Baby, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 100. Their second album, CrazySexyCool, was a mega hit with four top five singles including their first two No. 1’s Creep and Waterfalls. It was Waterfalls that became their signature song, with its corresponding video getting major air time on MTV and winning Video of the Year. TLC won two Grammys and was named Artist of the Year at the Billboard Music Awards in 1996. The third studio album, FanMail, came out in 1999 and included two more No. 1 hits in No Scrubs and Unpretty. The album won TLC three more Grammys.

The band took some time off after FanMail with Lopes putting out a solo album and the group reuniting to work on a fourth studio album, 3D, which was released seven months after Lopes’ death. Watkins and Thomas have continued to work together, tour and produce albums as TLC. They have sold over 90 million records worldwide, which makes them the best-selling American female group of all time. VH1 ranked TLC as the greatest female group of all time. Lopes spoke openly about growing up in an abusive household and dealing with alcoholism. She had a tumultuous relationship with former Atlanta Falcon receiver Andre Rison, that included burning down his mansion in 1994. She claimed that Rison beat her and she set his shoes on fire in the bathtub for revenge. She got five years probation for the offense. Her family formed the Lisa Lopes Foundation after her death, which raises money for neglected and abandoned youth and hosts the Left Eye Music Fest in Decatur, Ga., every year.

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