AUBURN | The start of March couldn’t have gone better for No. 1 Auburn.
The Tigers had an impressive win at No. 17 Kentucky, which clinched the SEC Championship with two more regular season games remaining.
Bruce Pearl constantly talks to his player about making history and this team has certainly provided plenty of it.
The win in Lexington was just the third in program history and the first since 1988. It’s Auburn’s 16th Quad 1 win, which is six more than any other team in the country. Dylan Cardwell also became AU’s all-time winningest player.
And that was all just in one day. And it’s been done against the toughest non-conference schedule in program history and in one of the toughest conferences in college basketball history.
Three of AU’s six regular season SEC Championship have come under Pearl as have two of the three SEC Tournament Championships along with the program’s only trip to the Final Four.
History, history and more history.
It might make you wonder what’s left for Pearl and his players to prove this season?
Everything.
It has already been an historical season but this team is not close to satisfied. You can see it every time they step on the court or hear it every time they speak into a microphone.
This team has a determination and a will to win as good as any I’ve covered in my 25 years.
They are talented, they’re experienced and they’re certainly well coached, but you don’t go 27-2 against this schedule and 15-1 in this conference without something more.
You don’t win so many games on the road and so many that come down to the final minutes or even seconds without that something extra.
It’s all those intangibles that coaches talk about all the time like leadership and mental toughness and chemistry. You can’t measure it but you know when a team’s got it.
And oh boy does this Auburn team have it.
That’s why there’s not going to be a let-up over the final week. AU still has a No. 1 overall seed to clinch and a huge matchup against Alabama to close out the regular season, which will conclude with the nets coming down to celebrate the SEC Championship at Neville Arena.
After all, March and all its madness is just getting started.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 34 years to the day found film footage airs on a tabloid T.V. show, which later turns out to be part of a video for the debut single of a rising industrial rock band. On March 3, 1991, Hard Copy ran a segment from footage that was found on a Michigan farm, which the show claimed showed a ritual killing. It turned out to be the final scene of the video for Nine Inch Nails’ “Down in It.” The video was recorded in the Chicago warehouse district and for the final scene, which showed frontman Trent Reznor acting out his death, the directors used a camera tied to a balloon. During filming, the rope securing the balloon broke and it travelled 200 miles before landing on the farm. The farmer found the camera a year later and turned it over to the FBI, which investigated it as a potential snuff film until an agent recognized Reznor. Joking about it later, Reznor said, “That was the icing on the cake getting on the worst TV show in America.” MTV ended up editing out the scene in the final video that played on air. “Down in It” was the first song written by Reznor, which he later said was his take on the song “Dig It” by Skinny Puppy.
Michael Trent Reznor was born in New Castle, Penn., in 1965. He began playing the piano at age 12 and was inspired to become a musical artist after seeing the Eagles in concert in 1976. He played both the saxophone and tuba in high school and was active in theatre. He joined his first band in high school and after a year of college, he dropped out to pursue music as a full-time career. He was a part of several different bands, mainly playing keyboards, before he set out on his own, playing all the instruments on his first recordings, which has continued through most of his career. He has gone on to release 11 studio albums under Nine Inch Nails and another 19 soundtracks with Atticus Ross. His most popular songs include 1989’s “Something I Can Never Have,” 1992’s “Wish,” and 1994’s “Closer” and “Hurt.” Reznor has won four Grammy Awards, a Primetime Emmy and two Academy Awards, which came for the original scores for 2010’s The Social Network and 2011’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.
