Link sAUsage: Nice Hire, Jay

Aside from the banner win on the gridiron Saturday afternoon, there was quite a bit to write home about from this weekend on the Plains, starting with the hire of new softball head coach Mickey Dean from James Madison.

Dean averaged nearly 50 wins per year in his five seasons at JMU, and seems to be pretty confident that he’ll be able to continue the success we’ve been accustomed to on the Plains!

On the other diamond, Auburn made a hire to replace departed pitching coach Brad Bohannon, who traitorized himself to go lead the program across the state. In his place, we’ve now got an old head coach with a ton of experience.

Back on the football field, Jarrett Stidham found a rhythm on Saturday afternoon, completing 32-37 passes for better than 300 yards in the win over Mercer. It was a pretty historic performance for the Auburn quarterback.

He also completed 18 straight passes, setting an Auburn record in the process, beating Stan White’s mark of 16 straight from 1993.

As for Auburn’s biggest injury question, Darius James was carted off the field in the first half on Saturday, but he seems to be fine, to everyone’s relief.

In the NFL, it was good to see one former Tiger get back to a successful role in the league -- Cody Parkey is now with the Dolphins and he made his presence felt in his first game with the team.

Stick around tomorrow for the rest of our NFL results, and as always, there will be more coming from this past weekend as we close the book on Mercer and look ahead to the SEC opener against Missouri this coming Saturday. War Eagle.