AUBURN | You can’t blame Bruce Pearl for pushing his players hard in the three days between a road win at South Carolina last Tuesday and Saturday night’s battle against Florida.
The Gators are a veteran and talented team and UF head coach Mike White held a 7-3 record against Pearl in the series including a decisive 74-57 win at Auburn Arena last February.
The preparation certainly showed, but it nearly backfired.
Florida’s pressing defense disrupted the Tigers and forced them into running a lot of half-court offense, often with the clock running down. AU was fatigued too, particularly in the second half as UF battled back to within a point with 8:37 left.
“I thought for the first time the grind of the season may have been a factor,” saidBruce Pearl Saturday night. “I may have practiced them too hard this week in preparation for Florida. We just did not have our legs.”
On top of all that, two of Auburn’s top players, Walker Kessler and Jabari Smith, were battling foul trouble throughout the game.
Despite all those issues, all those impediments to winning, Auburn did, in fact, win by 12 points, the third double-digit victory in three conference games.
They did it by making big shot after big shot despite the fatigue. None bigger than Smith’s 3-pointer that came directly after UF cut the lead to one. Wendell Green and KD Johnson also made clutch baskets down the stretch
It was every bit of a gutsy win. The type of win that a team builds on and gives confidence to the players that they can be successful even when things aren’t exactly going well.
And there’s sure to be plenty of adversity Tuesday night at Alabama where the Tigers have lost three of their last four games. It’ll be another early test, and one thing Pearl is going to make sure of is AU has plenty of legs in Coleman Coliseum.
“I definitely will back it off tomorrow. They need to recover,” said Pearl.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 46 years to the day a song written and sung under a stage name, based on the CB radio craze, which led to the making of a popular movie, rose to the top of the charts. On Jan. 10, 1976, C.W. McCall’s Convoy hit No. 1 on the Billboard 100. It also spent six weeks atop the U.S. Country charts. C.W. McCall was a character created by advertising executive Bill Fries for a bread company’s ad. A novelty song, Convoy told the story of a group of truckers led by the Rubber Duck protesting government regulations. It’s listed No. 98 on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Country Songs of All Time. It spawned the 1978 film, Convoy, which starred Kris Kristofferson as the Rubber Duck, Ali McGraw and Ernest Borgnine. It made over $45 million in the U.S., which is the highest-grossing film in director Sam Peckinpah’s career. Convoy, the song, was featured in the video game, Grand Theft Auto V.
Williams Dale Fries Jr., was born in Audubon, Iowa in 1928. He grew up listening to country music. Working as the creative director for an ad agency, Fries won a Clio Award for his T.V. add for Old Home Bread featuring a truck driver named C.W. McCall. It led to three song, which were written and sung by Fries with the music composed by Chip Davis of Mannheim Steamroller. The pair also teamed up on Convoy and the follow-up song, Round the World with the Rubber Duck. Fries, who goes by McCall, even released a song, Pine Tar Wars, based on the incident when Kansas City Royal all-star George Brett was called out following a two-run home run after New York Yankees manager Billy Martin complained to the umpires that Brett had too much pine tar on his bat. It gave the Yankees the win but a protest by the Royals was upheld and the game was resumed 25 days later with the Royals winning. McCall was elected mayor of Ouray, Colorado in 1986. In all, McCall released eight original albums and four compilation albums. His 1977 song, Roses for Mama, rose to No. 2 on the country charts. He was inducted into the Iowa Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2009.
