A Sunday mid-afternoon thunderstorm swooped on Plainsman Park, sending whatever was left of the 2,209 fans in attendance out the gates and prompting a near-heroic covering of the field by a shorthanded groundscrew.

What transpired 57 minutes later, with a handful of standing fans remaining, was an all-too-familiar ending to what have become all-too-familiar weekends.

Strike three — looking. Auburn loses.

That final Justin Hargett strikeout tied the club’s all-time record with seven games to play and capped yet another lopsided loss to Ole Miss. The 11-4 setback marked the Tigers’ seventh straight conference loss, their 10th of their last 11 and the third time being on the wrong end of a three-game sweep.

“Certainly a frustrating weekend for all of us,” coach John Pawlowski said.

The past few weeks have mimicked a trend of late-season swoons over the past five years, all of which ended with the Tigers not making the SEC Tournament.

The best Auburn has done since 2004 was its 4-9 end to the 2007 season.

The latest down weekend didn’t change much regarding Auburn’s status to make the SEC Tournament. It just gave the Tigers less time to figure out how to play competitively against its conference foes.

The Tigers dropped from ninth to 10th in the SEC standings, falling behind ninth-place Kentucky, but they remain two-and-a-half games behind Vanderbilt for the eighth and final spot. Auburn will travel to Kentucky for a three-game series next weekend.

“Guys are going to have to regroup, refocus,” Pawlowski said. “Anything can happen. But we’re going to have to turn it around pretty quickly.”

It certainly didn’t happen Sunday, as the Tigers let one inning “get out of hand,” as Pawlowski said, and never recovered.

The inning in question was Ole Miss’ four-run fifth — not to be confused with the four-run fifth it put together Friday and the four-run third that did the Tigers in Saturday.

The Rebels sent all nine batters to the plate, using five singles and a walk to turn a nip-and-tuck 1-0 game into a five-run deficit. They
added two more in the sixth and two more in the seventh off relievers Austin Hubbard and Bradley Hendrix to nullify the progress made
by Auburn’s three-run fifth inning and ensure freshman Dexter Price would be picking up his second loss of the season.

“As a pitcher and as a team, when you get in those situations, you’ve got to find ways to overcome an inning,” Pawlowski said. “It’s just a matter of trying to execute pitches and trying to get out of trouble when you can and we didn’t do that today.”

Back-to-back RBI singles from Trent Mummey, Justin Hargett and Ben Jones were all the Tigers could muster off Ole Miss emergency starter Brett Bukvich. Scott Bittle, who carries a 5-2 record and 2.17 ERA, was scratched right before he was about to take the mound because of soreness in his biceps.

The only thing the change may have done was delay Auburn’s rewriting of the strikeouts record until Friday, when the first Tigers’ strikeout will do just that.

“As long as we have some hope and the opportunities are there, the kids are going to continue to play hard,” Pawlowski said. “Hopefully, we can turn the tables.”

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