Arond the Plains, 4/24

I think I could use a pair of shorts like those.

Champions. So I'm kind of stupidly behind on this, but better late than never, right? Anyways, the Auburn women's golf team took home an SEC championship last weekend. The team put together a Tiger-worthy charge on the final day of competition, going from 3 strokes down to Arkansas to win by a decisive 8. (By "Tiger-worthy," I of course mean "worthy of Auburn's long and distinguished athletic tradition" and not, you know, that Woods guy.)

The title is the program's first since 2006 and their seventh all-time, placing them third on the SEC list and just one behind second-place Florida. Not bad at all, ladies, not bad. War Eagle.

Beisbol. Oh, this is not going well. Plainsman Parking Lot, after Auburn fell to Samford 8-2 Tuesday, summarizes the current state of the team:

Last Night we lost to Samford. A team Auburn beat 18-7 earlier in the season (in a game where the Bulldogs trotted out 8 different pitchers)

-In that loss, Auburn had only 2 hits, (solo Home Runs). However, that's 2 hits. At home. To Samford.

-With the loss to South Carolina on Sunday, Auburn has now lost its last 2 SEC series. We are sitting at a cool 8-10, good enough for 8th place in the league

-Joseph Sanders, one of our top hitters (some might argue our best hitter), is now gone for at least 3 weeks after getting nailed by a pitch Tuesday, cracking his jaw.

Particularly with the upcoming slate looking as rugged as it does--a road series at LSU starts today--you might think Auburn's "Road to Hoover 2009!" was toast, but PPL notes that if they can win the May 8-10 Kentucky series in Lexington, they'll have the head-to-head tiebreaker with all four of the teams below them in the standings. So hope? Definitely not lost just yet, but the loss of Sanders and the general across-the-board decline in play mean there's a ton of work to do.

Gettin' paid, son. Also old, but worth noting: Nell Fortner got her much-deserved extension. She will earn more as Auburn's women's basketball coach than Charlie Weatherbie earned as UL-Monroe's football team when the Warhawks upset Alabama. I'm not sure what that means, exactly, but for some strange reason I feel compelled to make the comparison.

Also, they're smart. 10 different members of the Auburn national champion men's swim team made the SEC Academic honor roll ... including four swimmers majoring in "biomedical sciences." Damn.