BMatt’s Monday musings
AUBURN | It was like Groundhog Day at Jordan-Hare Stadium Saturday.
Once again, Auburn’s defense played like a championship unit only to be let down by an offense that can’t get it done against a quality SEC opponent. It’s really hard to hold back or look for the bright side after that performance.
Gus Malzahn had two weeks to implement a plan to beat Georgia and that plan netted 171 total yards and 0 points after three quarters. It was only after he abandoned his plan and went with a two-minute offense the final quarter that Auburn erupted for 14 points and had the ball with a chance to tie the game twice in the final six minutes.
Malzahn, who has emphatically insisted all season that Auburn is a run/play-action team, rushed for 124 yards at Florida, 130 at LSU and 84 against Georgia — all losses. Against ranked teams this season, Malzahn’s offense is averaging 18.5 points per game. And it’s been similar every year under Malzahn with the exception of 2013-14 and 17.
I’ve touched on the whys before such as sub-par recruiting and development at just about every offensive position along with the still inexplicable decision to go away from the dual-threat quarterback and zone read schemes that he used to run roughshod over the SEC in 2010, 13 and 14. But I’m not sure that matters anymore.
The bottom line is Malzahn is being paid $7 million a year to lead Auburn’s football program and run the offense. He’s done a solid job directing the former but it’s his offense that continues to shoot blanks in Auburn’s biggest games.
No Auburn coach can sustain a 6-15 record against LSU, Georgia and Alabama. It’s becoming an untenable situation.
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Moving on to a program that continues impress, men’s basketball is off to a 4-0 start heading into tonight’s game against Colgate. I’m impressed with how this team is starting to come together and I’ll have much more on the group in the coming weeks, but I really want to address another fine recruiting class that was just signed by Bruce Pearl and his hard-working staff.
Pearl has once again struck the right balance between adding a superstar-type talent to the program in Sharife Cooper along with a couple of talented program guys like Justin Powell and Chris Moore. He did the same last year with Isaac Okoro and a big group of high-upside players. Cooper looks like the type of player that will step in right away and be a difference-maker at point guard. Powell looks like he could develop into one of the SEC’s best 3-point shooters in the coming years while Moore looks like he could become a bigger and more polished version of Desean Murray.
Yes, Pearl and his staff missed out on some high-profile players that chose schools like Kentucky, North Carolina and Duke, but a look at some of the top players they’re on for the spring signing period — five-star Jalen Green, five-star Greg Brown, four-star Cameron Thomas, four-star Jaylin Williams, four-star Clifford Omoruyi and four-star Jayden Stone — tells me April/May could be a couple of very bountiful months for Auburn basketball.
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In today’s musical journey, we go back 33 years to Nov. 15, 1986 and the release of one of best-selling hip hop, or rap rock, albums of all time. The Beastie Boys debut studio album, Licensed to Ill, has sold over 10 million copies and has been certified diamond by the Record Industry Association. It became the first-ever rap record to top the Billboard album chart.
The album had several hits on it including Brass Monkey, which was certified gold, and Fight for Your Right, which reached No. 7 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1987 and is included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll. Fight for Your Right was actually written by Adam Yauch and friend Tommy Cushman as a parody of party songs like Smokin’ in the Boys Room and I Wanna Rock, but it quickly became a party song of its own. There are several cameos in the video including LL Cool J, Flea and former MTV News reporter Tabitha Soren.
The Beastie Boys were originally formed in New York as a four-person hardcore punk band, the Young Aborigines, in 1978. They made a transition to hip hop in 1983 and reformed with the trio of Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch, Michael ‘Mike D’ Diamond and Adam ‘Ad-Rock’ Horovitz. The group has sold 26 million records in the U.S. and 50 million worldwide, making Beastie Boys the best-selling rap group since Billboard started recording sales in 1991. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012, just weeks before the death of Yauch due to parotid cancer. The band officially disbanded in 2014.