Link sAUsage: 5 August 2016

BASKETBALL

The SB Nation SEC site Team Speed Kills has incoming freshman Mustapha Heron pegged as a potential SEC Player of the Year for his importance to the 2016-17 Tigers.

FOOTBALL

The first poll of the pre-season is out! The Amway Coaches Poll (which Gus (or, rather, Kirk Sampson) will be voting in) released its rankings. I put them up against Auburn’s schedule to see whether we have more or less reason to be concerned about the way the schedule is set up for the year.

It’s never too early to look ahead! With two days of practice in the books, we talked to the Clemson site Shakin’ The Southland about the opening game of the season. Bear in mind those questions and answers were actually written prior to Day 1, but it’s all still too early to be more than speculative.

Want to know about Day 2 of practice? There are tons of breakdowns out there. Here’s ours with tweets from the press conferences and video/pictures from the Twitter that the beat writers sent out.

Kerryon Johnson has never really been a feature back. Even in high school he was more of an all-purpose back while Madison Academy was racking up titles. He’s ready for the roll, now, according to his father. Incidentally, do you know who was the feature back for Madison Academy during those times? That would be Malik Miller, who is also an option for Auburn at running back.

The Ledger-Enquirer spoke to Jovon Robinson’s JUCO coach about his dismissal, and he confirmed some of the off-field issues that Jovon failed to handle or work through in order to make the coaches happy. So, they dismissed him. I’m fine with that. No one should be above the team. That’s how you get issues like we had in 2014 with Jermaine Whitehead’s situation and last year with Duke Williams.

But, sure, let’s keep pushing the other narrative and call Robinson’s comments a “blistering series of quotes.” I pretty much already sided with the coaches since there HAS to be a reason you kick your presumed primary running back off the team, but now we have that confirmation above.

Austin Golson was adequate at Center last season, but his home has always been on the end of the line. That’s where he’ll be back to this year as he’s taking over a tackle role, and he’s feeling better than ever about it.

CBSSports.com has Carl Lawson ranked as their 18th player in their way-too-early Top 25 NFL Draft Ranking. If he stays healthy and has the year he’s capable of, then Carl definitely won’t make it out of Round 1. I didn’t know there was such a thing as the “Ted Hendricks Award,” but Lawson is on the Watch List for it.

In case you missed it, for the 3rd straight season, all of Auburn’s signees qualified academically. That’s a huge deal. I mention it in the recap above that Nick Coe got the official word, yesterday, and I can’t wait to see him on the field.

You could read this trash of an article about the “sham of a system” that is JUCO and how it relates to Auburn, but I wouldn’t recommend it. I loved seeing Brandon Marcello call out AL.com on Twitter about it.

In former Tiger news, Kevin Greene got his Gold Jacket last night as he was welcomed into the NFL Hall of Fame! Not bad for a guy who walked onto Auburn’s football team and didn’t have much of a collegiate career. I’m still trying to imagine how he fit into a tank as an Armor officer, though.