boomstick

Can’t be changed unless it’s at the state legislative level. Since Auburn is a state school, nothing can be done for athletes (or any one particular segment of the student body) without being offered to anyone. And with Auburn’s high OOS enrollment rate, there’s zero incentive to make it easier or cheaper for OOS students to come here, even though it would significantly benefit the baseball team. Alabama is in the same boat. The state of Mississippi did it back around 2009-2010 because their enrollment was struggling a bit. They needed to increase enrollment so they passed legislation to allow OOS students in bordering states to have their OOS tuition waived and only have to pay in-state tuition. That’s why we’ve seen an influx of Alabama kids going to Miss St and Ole Miss in the last decade. It’s cheaper for them there than here. Plus, the academic money is supposedly a little easier to obtain. Combine a cheaper overall tuition, a little easier path to academic money for some, and part of the 11.7, and you can get a much cheaper cost of attendance at Miss St than Auburn right now.

I think it's been his back for a while, and he's tried to play through it. He's not looked the same since right before the September window. Plus, he's often dealt with a back issue.

John Brooks withdraws from the camp due to a back injury. No replacement for him has been announced yet. Ream withdrew a few days ago and was replaced by Walker Zimmermann. Matt Miazga might get called in to replace Brooks. We currently have 4 CBs on the roster. So, I wouldn't hate calling in Joe Scally as another RB/LB option unless GGG is just convinced he needs 5 CBs.

Puli and Reyna still haven't played a minute since picking up injuries in the last window. It's been rumored that there's a chance they could be available and play for the final match in this three-game set if needed. But I imagine both clubs would prefer that those guys not play and be ready for their club after the break, especially Chelsea.

GOALKEEPERS (3): Sean Johnson (New York City FC; 9/0), Zack Steffen (Manchester City/ENG; 23/0), Matt Turner (New England Revolution; 10/0) DEFENDERS (10): George Bello (Atlanta United; 4/0), John Brooks (Wolfsburg/GER; 45/3), Sergiño Dest (Barcelona/ESP; 13/1), Mark McKenzie (Genk/BEL; 7/0), Shaq Moore (Tenerife/ESP; 11/1), Tim Ream (Fulham/ENG; 46/1), Chris Richards (Hoffenheim/GER; 3/0), Antonee Robinson (Fulham/ENG; 15/1), Miles Robinson (Atlanta United; 12/2), DeAndre Yedlin (Galatasaray/TUR; 67/0) MIDFIELDERS (8): Kellyn Acosta (Colorado Rapids; 40/2), Tyler Adams (RB Leipzig/GER; 17/1), Gianluca Busio (Venezia/ITA; 6/0), Luca de la Torre (Heracles/NED: 3/0), Sebastian Lletget (LA Galaxy; 32/8), Weston McKennie (Juventus/ITA; 25/7), Yunus Musah (Valencia/ESP; 6/0), Cristian Roldan (Seattle Sounders; 28/0) FORWARDS (6): Brenden Aaronson (Red Bull Salzburg/AUT; 10/5), Paul Arriola (D.C. United; 8/0), Matthew Hoppe (Mallorca/ESP; 5/1), Ricardo Pepi (FC Dallas; 1/1), Tim Weah (Lille/FRA; 13/1), Gyasi Zardes (Columbus Crew; 62/14)

For me, it wouldn't be more bend. It would just feel like my left shoulder is working more down and my right shoulder working more up. What I see in that last video feels to me like you're shoulders are working on a flat plane as if you were standing straight up and rotating to your right. So, even though you're bent at the waist and your spine angle is in good position, you're shoulders aren't rotating perpendicular to that spine angle.

So, yeah, you definitely have some of same issue I have. It's part of your immediate takeaway where you roll your wrists backwards slightly as you start to take the club away. When I start running into this problem, my thought becomes trying to keep the emblem on my glove hand pointed towards the ball on the takeaway and never pointed up towards the sky. I try to think of the back of my left hand mirroring my clubface. The other thing I try to work on is rotating my left shoulder more under my swing instead of rotating around my spine. When I feel my shoulder rotate more horizontally, I feel like I lay open the club on my takeaway. When I feel more vertical turn in my shoulders, I feel like I have a better, more square takeaway.

If you already have a video or videos and you have a youtube account, just upload it to YT and copy the links here. Most smart phones can upload videos to YT directly from your camera/photos, and it takes seconds to post. My initial two thoughts on what you describe is either a casting on the downswing, which can be caused by a multitude of things, or a severe opening of the face of the club on the initial takeaway, which can lead to all kinds of contact issues. I'm currently battling the second issue right now.

Eh, those teams seemed to have the same issues this squad has. Scoring more than one goal per match has been an ongoing issue. And like us, several other nations didn't bring their best rosters to the Gold Cup either. Mexico brought almost their best roster, but several of the more competitive nations were missing big pieces like we were. We had chances against Honduras in the Nations League Semi to score 3-4 goals. They are going to concede possession to us. We have to take advantage of that and put some goals away because we will have chances. But Honduras is going to get their chances in transition, and we have to be prepared for that defensively.

I'm choosing to be naïve and think we will muster the guts and fight to pull out a win. If the "on paper" team shows up and performs to their "on paper" abilities, we should beat Honduras. I'd like to think that one of these three matches we'd get a good, complete performance across the board.

And then there's this!

I hadn't seen that. That would kinda make some of the talk about his teammates not liking him make a little more sense.

McKennie sent back to Italy (rumors that he broke COVID rules by leaving the team hotel in Nashville, also might’ve brought a female back to the hote). Dest back to Spain because of an ankle injury. Jackson Yueill called in. No Gio on Wednesday. Already without Weah. And Honduras started 9 new guys in their second match. So their first group who started at Canada should be well rested. This is shaping up to be a really, really tough test.

Looking at Canada's stats from last night. They played 9 of their 11 starters 90+ minutes. Buchanan left at the half with an ankle knock and they made one sub in the 86'. Interested to see how they handle their lineup against us. I'd imagine they will have some shakeups, and I expect us to do the same. I guess the positives there would be Pulisic and Brooks are two of our best players coming in fresh.

Honestly, it was a pretty poor performance. We started the first 10-15 minutes like I thought we'd play all night, but that wore off quickly. From then on, there was little build-up and we couldn't get the ball at the feet of our playmakers until really late in the match. Really disappointed with the play of Dest and Yedlin. IMO their play significantly stifled our ability to build and retain possession. And they didn't really do anything with the ball to advance play or make us more threatening. And if they're not going to do that while pushing up in the attack, I'd rather them just distribute and stay farther back and not bring more defenders and pressure into the spaces the MF and wingers are trying to operate in. Having said that, getting a result in your road games is the basic requirement, and we did that. So, while not a good match, we got a result and need to play better against Canada.

No doubt. Who would've thought on Oct 11, 2017 that four years later we'd be ranked 10th in the world by FIFA? Quite the turnaround for Gregg Berhalter and this young group of players.

Yeah, I think that next tier is fair. I just think the confidence comes from the validation that so many of these players are sought after by world renowned clubs. There's not as much proving to be done and questioning if you're good enough when you're being linked in a transfer from Juventus to Tottenham or a regular starter for Barcelona or Chelsea or Dortmund. Those clubs give instant credibility, and it seems to rub off on these "kids."

Yeah, I remember following the last cycle and just praying we could somehow get into the WC because the next cycle and the 2026 cycle would be so great with some of the young talent we had coming up. But it was probably 20-25 names, and several of them are big contributors now. I can't keep up with the number of kids who are eligible MNT players because there are so many now. And this current group of young stars are really the breakthrough group that got Americans to Europe en masse. I think MLS and the MLS academies should get some credit for that. And honestly, the national team doing what it did in 2010 and 2014 to make waves at the WC probably propelled a lot of this movement as well. This is probably 20+ years of laying groundwork in US Soccer to get to this point, and it's pretty great to go into this WCQ with the feeling that we're as talented as we've ever been and hungrier than we've been in years. This whole group seems to play with confidence and a chip on their shoulders, and that's been lacking in the last two cycles.

The Octagonal starts tomorrow night in San Salvador. We have at El Salvador, Canada, and at Honduras in this three-game swing. Pulisic didn't travel to El Salvador, but he should play against Canada over the weekend. Squad looks pretty good though, and I expect a lot of guys to play over these three games.

IMO he’s a big pickup. He caught against us in our opening series, and I’m not sure I’ve heard Butch be more complimentary about an opposing player. He clearly caught Butch’s attention in that series.

I'm not sure I ever remember us having this type of roster overage going into the fall. We may have in the past where we brought in walk-ons through tryouts or something like that, but certainly not from public recruiting and transfer announcements. My thought is we redshirt several of the young guys because we will have 27-28 upperclassmen on next year's roster. But even with that, we're bringing in a pretty big class next year. So, I'm not sure how Butch is going to balance all of that out.

You're right. I don't know why I was thinking Armstrong was a LHP.

Agree on Barnett. The LHP portion in that post was referring to Armstrong (the JUCO kid from Chatt Valley), not Burky. And I wonder how much the hype about Bryson's raw power and exit velos in the offseason got to him. Then, he tears it up the first series of the year, and it was all downhill from there. He seems to have the tools to be an all-fields hitter, but the emphasis on power and lift doesn't seem to be translating for him. Also, we picked up another pitching commit last night. JUCO kid out of Cali named Grant Newman. Guessing he's a 2022 kid and will be in this class since he graduated HS in 2018 and started at UC Santa Barbara.

Barnett pitched over the weekend. Gave up 3 runs on 7 hits in 5 IP and got the win. He's had a pretty good summer minus the one outing where he got hit hard. Bryson Ware was released from Falmouth. He hit .067 and just never got anything going. Hoping he bounces back this fall and gets things figured out. Farquhar, Burkhalter, and Armstrong have all had really good summers for Alexandria in the Cal Ripken League. Farquhar is hitting .331 and playing every day. Burkhalter has 2 saves and only given up 2 runs in 10 appearances/14 IP. He's only allowed 6 hits and 2 ERs in those 14 innings with 28 Ks and 4 BBs. He should be a big factor in our bullpen next year. Armstrong has thrown 19.1 IP in 8 appearances with a 2.32 ERA. He has 25 Ks to 7 BBs. Seems like he could be a really solid LHP relief option this year. Cole Foster has struggled in Charlottesville, but I don't put much into that with him being a freshman playing his first year of summer ball. His progression this fall will be more important IMO. Ben Schorr is still playing and is second on the Elmira team in RBIs with 19. Sokol pitched last week and went 5 innings and gave up 6 runs but only 2 were earned. So, it sounds like he didn't get much help behind him. Kade Snell has had a bit of an up and down summer, but there have been bright spots. He's thrown 36 innings with a 4.00 ERA and 40 K/12 BB ratio. The BAA and WHIP aren't that bad at .236 and 1.25. Curious to see how he develops this fall and if he can find a role with this pitching staff. Most everyone else is done playing.

Biggest thing that sucks about that is he was the only LHP recruit from HS in that class. A bit off topic, but any word on Garrett Wade's recovery and time table?