After yesterday's whirlwind, today will hopefully be nice and relaxing and easy to manage. Let's wrap up some of the info you may have missed from yesterday first, though.
NATIONAL SIGNING DAY.
ALL YOUR RECRUITS ARE BELONG TO US. That's essentially what USA Today is pointing out in this article about the effect of hiring Will Muschamp once Florida let him go. Auburn snagged a number of targets who were recruits Florida would probably otherwise have landed. Mark Paden (@TheAuburner) summed it up in his usual quick-witted way:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Muschamp is showing why you shouldn't be too upset when your former coach spends a year getting paid big money to stay home & do nothing.</p>— Mark P (@TheAuburner) <a href="https://twitter.com/TheAuburner/status/563003757894848512">February 4, 2015</a></blockquote>
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It was a pretty good day for Auburn, overall. You can check out the class wrap-up article we wrote to see our initial thoughts. To get more information on the day as it happened, check out the Story Stream that was running all day long. Be sure you also see the awesome work WarRoomEagle did on the Google Map of where the recruits were coming from.
Signing day wasn't without its drama, we followed along with the Byron Cowart situation as it happened. ESPN spoke to him about his decision to choose the Tigers. That article was written before the Letter of Intent was finally faxed in, and followed it up this morning with another complete article on the situation.
The official site has profiles on some of Auburn's early enrollees that you can check out. You can find those in the archive of articles for yesterday.
Gus Malzahn was happy with the class the Tigers signed. In particular he was happy that Auburn picked up an elite pass rusher. Cowart and Lawson should be a terror for opposing quarterbacks. He then celebrated Auburn's consensus Top 10 recruiting class by doing what he always does: going to Waffle House.
Gus was particularly happy with Auburn's ability to keep recruits who committed to the Tigers. Auburn did not have much in the way of drama in terms of having to fight to keep recruits. Most of Auburn's original targets that went elsewhere did so because the Tigers were looking in other directions. They offered Elijah Sullivan a greyshirt, but he turned that down and signed with Kansas State on Wednesday. I hate to see that Auburn did that, but I was much happier to hear that it was something in the works weeks ago and not a sudden thing.
AUBURN BASKETBALL
The men take on LSU tonight in Baton Rouge. It's a 6pm tip and will be on ESPN2. In spite of all of his injuries, Tahj Shamsid-Deen will still play, and play hard. He's been a warrior for the Tigers, this season.
AUBURN SPORTS
We'll have a "Home on the Plains" up before too long, but for now just remember that tonight is the opening of Auburn's softball season! Clint Myers' Tigers are poised to do great things this year.