• Your offensive MVP: Ben Tate -- 4 rushes, 72 yards, 2 touchdowns, one that went for 46 yards and another for 9.

• Your defensive MVP: Michael Goggans -- 2 tackles, 1 sack, 2 TFLs.

• Your special teams MVP: Wesley Byrum -- made a field goal from 46 yards, just came up short from 51. Also missed the net on the sidelines during some warmups one time from about five yards away. That can't be the most comforting thing for Auburn fans.
  

• Your most heart-warming story was running back Onterio McCalebb. I wrote at length about McCalebb's tough upbringing in Fort Meade, Fla., in today's newspaper. He hoped his mother, Staphisa McMillian, would be able to make the trip up for A-Day and see him play for the first time in her life. She's battled drug problems and had her son forcibly taken away from her when he was in the fourth grade, but McCalebb would do anything for her and wants to make the NFL to get her off the streets. Well, she did show up to A-Day Saturday, watching him break off a 70-yard run for a touchdown in the third quarter. “It’s just wonderful,” McCalebb said. “I turned around one time and saw my mom on the sidelines, and she was just sitting there laughing. It looked like she was crying. I was so excited.”

• Nobody was close to McCalebb on that run, by the way. By the time he reached the end zone, he was a good 15 yards ahead of the closest defender. The boy is fast. "As soon as I got past the line of scrimmage, I knew no one was going to catch me," he said.

• WR Terrell Zachery had a pretty play for a touchdown in the second quarter that seemed to be vintage Malzahn. Burns took the snap, faked a handoff to Tate and appeared to run an option play to the right before flipping the ball to Zachery, who passed by the other direction on an inside end around. He got a block and shot up the left sideline for the score. “We’ve been working on that play all spring, and every time we ran it we were one block away from busting it,” Zachery said. “Today it was wide open.”

• That makes three big runs for Auburn on the day, each going for at least 46 yards. "Great running backs are going to be able to get to the second level and they're going to be able to make somebody miss," head coach Gene Chizik said. "Any time we can get what we call an explosive run, we think it demoralizes the defenses and we certainly strive to get six or seven of those a game."

• Fannin, the H-back, had two carries for 22 yards and four catches for 71 yards and a touchdown. He made a 41-yard catch on a deflected ball from Burns that was nearly intercepted. Fannin lost his helmet on the play and continued fighting for extra yardage for about five seconds. The defense never tackled him. With all that added bulk in the offseason, he is a beast. I wouldn't want to try to tackle him.

• Plenty of drops from the receivers today, most notably one by Derek Winter on a long pass from Burns that appeared to hit him right in stride. Converted cornerback Harry Adams had some trouble as well. "That's kind of what we're working on right now," Chizik said. "The wideouts have got to catch every ball that's thrown to them regardless of where it's put. It can be high, low, inside, outside, right on. It doesn't matter. We've got to be able to catch the football."

• Auburn didn't pull out all the stops on offense. "Obviously you're on TV, it's a spring game," Malzahn said. "We're in the base stages of our offense. We're just trying to get the base foundation so that in the summer they can actually work on things and improve without the coaches."

• BTW, the scoring system that Auburn used was more complicated than it should have been. I'm skeptical that all of the points were being awarded. For example, Tate only got six points on his first touchdown run, which went 46 yards. According to the scoring sheet, he should have also gotten two for it being the third straight first down and two more for being an "explosive play" of more than 15 yards. The defense seemed like got ripped off of a couple points for a couple three-and-outs as well.

• DT Mike Blanc had the defense's other sack but had to remind himself to hold up hitting the quarterback. “I had a sack and I was about to take him down, but I was like hold on, we can’t hit him,” he said. “It’s good. It teaches you how to practice. We can’t be hurting our teammates.”

• Blanc said he understood why the coaches didn't match up the first-team defense against the first-team offense. “There was no real reason for the first-team defense to play that much against the second-team offense,” he said. “Because our defensive line coach, he feels like he has a pretty good understanding of what we can contribute when the season comes around.”

• Chizik, on not pitting the ones vs. the ones: "It's been a real physical spring, and that's all we've done all spring, more than usual. I don't think most people subscribe to that theory and that's all we've done pretty much for 13 previous days."

• There was no real big reward for the winning team, like a better post-game meal. "Nah," defensive lineman Antonio Coleman said. "If there was a bet like that I can guarantee the scoreboard would have been different."

• QB Barrett Trotter, who was on crutches Saturday,will have surgery next week on his torn left ACL, according to AuburnSports.com. The general recovery time for that kind of injury is six to nine months. “It’s really tough,” Caudle said. “Barrett’s worked so hard in the offseason and he played so good in the spring. It’s not good for something to happen to that good of a guy, but it’s part of the game. You’ve just got to roll with the punches and get back.”

• The crowd of 45,381 was an A-Day record.

• Some other stats from Saturday:

• Offense: 55 plays, 501 yards
• Rushing plays/yards: 29-280
• Passing plays/yards: 26-221
• Third-down conversion: 4 of 11
• Defense: 0 turnovers (I thought this was a priority all spring?)
• WR D. Adams: 4 catches, 103 yards, TD
• RB Justin Albert: 7 rushes, 31 yards, TD
• P Clinton Durst: 3 punts, 42.7 avg., long of 52
• DB Matthew Sample: team-leading six tackles

• Practice wraps up with an evening practice Sunday. Chizik said it will be largely a teaching session. "We're just really going to go in and touch up and brush up because it's the last thing they're going to hear from us until next fall," he said.

• UPDATE: Auburn picked up a commitment from 6-foot-7, 275-pound Olive Branch, Miss., offensive tackle Shon Coleman on Saturday, according to AuburnSports.com. Coleman chose Auburn over offers from Mississippi State, Oklahoma State, Southern Miss and Florida International. He is the Tigers' fourth commitment for 2010 and the first on the offensive line, a major need. Auburn signed safety Daren Bates out of Olive Branch in its 2009 class.