Auburn notebook 8-20

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Auburn notebook

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Huntsville Times

Demanding preseason sidelines many Tigers

AUBURN - The preseason camp that coach Tommy Tuberville calls the one of the most physical in his eight seasons at Auburn continues to take a toll.

Left tackle King Dunlap left practice early Saturday with back problems. Middle linebacker Merrill Johnson (foot), cornerback Jonathan Wilhite (wrist), linebacker Will Herring (hamstring), freshman safety Zach Etheridge (hip pointer) and center Jason Bosley (ankle) all were held out of Saturday's practice after they were banged up in Friday night's scrimmage.

Wide receiver Courtney Taylor (knee), offensive linemen Leon Hart (abdominal strain) and Oscar Gonzalez (dislocated toe) and cornerback David Irons (hamstring) have all missed significant practice time and aren't expected back at full-speed before next week.

"We're still a M*A*S*H unit," Tuberville said.

Only linebacker Steve Gandy, out indefinitely after suffering complications from a deep thigh bruise, has been counted out of the season opener against Washington State on Sept. 2.

Grubbs works at tackle: When Dunlap went down, Ben Grubbs, the senior starter at left guard, worked at left tackle. Nall said he wants to look at Grubbs at the position with sophomore Tyronne Green at left guard. Green should return to practice by Tuesday.

On offense: Offensive coordinator Al Borges saw a lot to like and a lot not to like in Friday night's scrimmage.

"I'm glad we don't play tomorrow," Borges said. "We made a lot of mistakes. We ran a lot of offense against a lot of defense and we had a lot of assignment errors because of it. I think the bulk of the mistakes were made by the second unit, but (the first unit) made a few."

Borges was particularly disturbed by five dropped passes.

"We are bound and determined to practice hard and make the right adjustments personnel-wise until we get the people on the field that are going to make plays consistently," Borges said.

On defense: Defensive coordinator Will Muschamp said his players didn't back down in the heat Friday night.

"I thought we had a lot of great effort," Muschamp said. "For the second scrimmage, we tackled, for the most part, pretty well. We had good execution at times."

Muschamp said a mistake by a safety that led to a big play and a cornerback getting beat "over the top" were low points in the scrimmage.

"They are all correctable mistakes," Muschamp said. "The kids played hard throughout the entire scrimmage, and that's what we are looking for."

Muschamp praised the play of his defensive line, where senior Josh Thompson and sophomore Tez Doolittle are 1-2 at nose guard and sophomore Pat Sims and redshirt freshman Sen'Derrick Marks are 1-2 at tackle.