It's a very busy day for me with the basketball news on top of the scrimmage, but I will have the full report at some point. There were two fights near the end of the scrimmage that forced Sumrall to stop it and have the players do punishment sprints, but he admitted he was not really upset about the intensity. The three top QBs took turns operating from their own 25 and then in a red zone drill, with Kellen Tasby and one of the walk-on QBs getting in at the end of the 10-series affair.

The full update will come in this thread.

They had the first basketball interviews today since the day Tulane lost in the AAC tourney, and there is a lot of news. For one, Mari Jordan was back at practice after missing Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (the Wave did not practice Thursday), and Ron Hunter said Jordan had taken his name out of the portal. Second, Kam Williams committed to Kentucky, an indication of how high his reputation is. Third, Rowan Brumbaugh, who is more of an open book than any player I have ever covered, refused to commit to returning next year. Here is his full interview today, where he was brutally honest about everything he was asked.

On Mari Jordan being back and how significant that is:

"It's great news. Obviously he was a big part of this year, but at the end of the day we gotta go do it. We came in fourth place in the conference, like, that's cool and all, but we have a lot of stuff to do. Just having one player, we have to continue to build a good culture."

On the significance of the College Basketball Crown:

"I mean it's tough because we don't have a full roster. It's almost like a bowl game. It's a great idea. It should be fun, but going into next year I wouldn't expect this tournament to represent anything honestly."

On if he is over what happened against Memphis:

"Yeah, I'm over that. It's God's will at the end of the day. It's something to learn from. We'll be back."

On how comfortable he is with staying next year:

"I haven't made an official decision or anything like that, but I love it here. It's a great system. It works for me. It works for the team, so I just hope we can get some more guys."

On the deciding factors of staying or leaving:

"I love it here. There's nothing more from a people perspective, basketball school perspective. Honestly it would be more of a financial thing at the end of the day. When you look back five years from now, do you regret not taking a big opportunity? That's where I'm at for me. I'm always going to be an open book. I love it here. There's nothing more Tulane can do now at the end of the day."

On how much team needs to improve to get to NCAA tournament:

"A ton. You had one year of decent success, but we still came in fourth place in the American Conference. I don't even know if it was a top-10 conference this year (it was 11th), so we had success, but now is the time of year where everyone is told how good they are and people are told they are way better than they are. We literally came in fourth place in conference. We aren't that good. We don't have to keep getting so hyped up. We have tons of work to do. I'm just excited to get back in the gym. I love just working out and stuff because at the end of the day you have to guard the dude in front of you. You have to beat the team in front of you. It doesn't matter how much money you make, what school you go to, who thinks you're so good, who told you you're so good because you're not. I'm under an audience of one, and that's God."

Tulane had a spirited 11-on-11 session at the end of a a 90-minute practice on Thursday morning in preparation for Friday morning's scrimmage, which has been moved from Saturday because of the possibility of bad weather early Saturday. I did not realize the workout was ending early, so I caught only the last 40 minutes or so. A couple of times guys were tackled to the ground in what was supposed to be a non-tackling session, but Jon Sumrall prefers over-aggressiveness to under-aggressiveness and had no problem with the enthusiasm. The first thing I saw was a big run by Louisville transfer Maurice Turner on a cutback. He and freshman Javin Gordon have been the standouts of the spring at running back, but I will be very interested to see what Jamauri McClure does tomorrow. Although he has been quiet to this point, he excelled in every scrimmage last preseason. So far, Turner has been the home run threat and Gordon, who is built like Duda Barnes, has been Mr. Consistent, picking up the playbook quickly as an early enroller.

My spies said Cadin Semonza was not as sharp today as in other practices, but he completed three in a row during a 7-on-7 drill right before the 11-on-11 work. He started by going underneath to Gordo, then hit Sydney Mbanasor deep with a bit of a wobbly pass before throwing a dart to walk-on Walker Davis for about 20 yards.

When the 11-on-11 drill started, T.J. Finley let an inaccurate snap by Elijah Baker go through his hands on the first play. He followed with completions to Barnes underneath and Shaun Nicholas underneath around a draw by McClure.

Donovan Leary was next, and he completed a quick pass to Jimmy Calloway, who reversed field immediately and tried to cross to the other side, where linebacker Jean Clause Joseph met him and stripped him for a fumble the defense recovered. Leary then scrambled to his right and made a nice throw to Mbanasor, who received encouragement/motivation from wideouts coach Carter Sheridan all day. Leary was "sacked" on the next play, I believe by Geordan Guidry. Gordon caught a pass underneath on the last play.

Third was Semonza, who began by scrambing. He overthrew walk-on Trevor Evans on a deep route by a good margin before hitting tight end Anthony Miller for a dcent gain and throwing behind Nicholas on a slant.

Kellen Tasby got a turn and started off with a perfect pass deep down the middle to Bryce Bohanon. For a second I wondered if he could create a four-way competition, but his next throw went right to walk-on safety Carson Klein for an easy, inexplicable interception, I'm not sure who he was trying to hit. The day finished with a pass to LeRon Husbands underneath.

At one point, they had the two true freshman defensive linemen out there together--tackle PaLanding Drammeh and end Nik Alston--with rush endTy Cooper and Guidry. The top cornerbacks were Jahiem Jojhnson and Armani Cargo--I did not see Rayshawn Pleasant--but they are mixing and matching the defense a lot and I will get a better handle of the early depth chart tomorrow.

I still don't have a pecking order at QB. If I had to wager right now, I would put it at Finley/Semonza/Leary but with little separation. Your guess is as good as mine at receiver even though you have not watched practice. A bunch of them have made plays, but none of them have been consistently productive in the four practices I have seen. It will be interesting to see which guys make plays in the scrimmage. I would put Bryce Bohanon, who has not been a significant factor in the passing game, at the top of the list to this point, with no clear order behind him. Jon Sumrall says it is the position that concerns him the most and one he might have to address after the spring in the portal.

The scrimmage will be at the end of tomorrow's practice, which will be a normal one until the tackling portion to finish off the week.

Sumrall, Will Hall and Javin Gordon talked after practice. I do not have time to transcribe them right now, but will get those quotes later.

We all know that Lombardi has been excellent this year, but his strikeout rate is unbelievable. In 13 innings, he has fanned 28 batters for an incredible 19.4 strikeouts per 9 innings. I’ve never heard of such a thing! Montiel is also spectacular, but his 15.4 Ks per 9 innings pales by comparison.

Speaking of our bullpen, thanks largely to Lombardi and Montiel, our relievers are striking out 12.1 batters per 9 innings while our starters only 9.3. Opponents are also batting .281 against our starters and only .220 against our relievers. The ERA’s for our starters is 5.42 and relievers is 4.49. Relievers are harmed by poor control walking or hitting 7.2 per 9 innings while our starters are walking or hitting 5.3— better, but still not particularly good. We need 4 starters and 4 relievers we can trust. We are far, far short of that.

Among our starters, Fladda has been either very good or very bad. His first, third, and fifth starts were good. His second, fourth, and sixth were bad. In his “good” starts, his ERA is 2.37. In his “bad” starts, it’s 10.95. If he is truly good every other start, we should see the “good” Fladda this Friday.

Cehajic has been much the same. During his first, third, and fifth starts, his ERA is 6.92. In his second and fourth starts, it’s 0.82. His next “even numbered’ start should be this weekend. Can we look forward to a “good” performance?

As to the seven other guys who have started a game, none have gone more than 3.1 innings and, as a group, have a 6.82 ERA as starters.

Over to the hitting side, although he’s still hitting .329 on the season, Mathias Haas is only 2 for his last 16. We need him to turn it around.

Like much of the team, Tanner Chun has struggled recently (3 for his last 24), but two of those four hits were HR’s.

Rasmussen, on the other hand, is on a terrific hot streak, Over the past twelve games, while the rest of the team has hit .221, he’s batted .400, to raise his already solid batting average to .366.

Everyone recognizes that Jackson Linn is having a terrible time at bat, but examining his season to date is interesting. He’s struck out 21 of his 48 official times at bat (44%), which is quite a lot. But he’s got 2 doubles and 2 HR’s among his seven hits, which suggest (with very little data) that when he hits it, it goes a long way. But, oddly enough, while the team as a group is hitting .341 when putting the ball in play (hits divided by at-bats minus strikeouts), Linn is only hitting .259 when he puts the ball in play. That is a very low success rate. So, strikeouts aren’t his only problem. Even putting the ball in play isn’t resulting in base hits.

Defense is harder to quantify but anyone who watches us play realizes our defense is bad. Coach rushes defensive replacements onto the field at four to five positions in almost every game to minimize the problem. But our .964 fielding average is the only well documented, though flawed, recognition of our ineptitude. It’s been several years since we fell below .970. Even our opponents, no great shakes either, are fielding at .971. But our inability to make simple plays, missing the cut-off man, and throwing to the wrong base is hard to quantify. Not getting to balls that should be outs is also a problem.

Anyhow, those are some stats that I found interesting. Let’s add some better ones.

Roll Wave!!!

We've seen no evidence that is going to happen, but Tulane's best hope is to dominate the AAC in the standings, starting this weekend at South Florida, which inexplicably has by far the league's highest RPI at 43. It will require a different team than the one that has played the first 25 games.

The sole encouraging thing about last night's 7-6 loss to UNO was Wes Burton's lights-out performance from the bullpen. It's not just that he struck out seven of the nine batters he faced in three perfect innings. It was how he looked doing it, going to a 2-0 count only once while showing total command and punching out some quality hitters. The 6-foot-8 grad transfer from Santa Monica, Calif., who appeared ticketed for a big role last season before tearing his UCL in the Fall Ball World Series, is a great interview. Here is what he said today.

On how confidence he is that he can replicate that performance:

"I've always believed in myself. I've obviously been through a lot in my career. I'm really grateful for the coaching staff and them giving me the opportunity to be here and continue to progress and continue to work with me. Just more than anything I'm really grateful for that opportunity and for that support. I'm starting to feel like myself again out there coming off the injury. That's really exciting, and I hope to keep it rolling."

On recovery process from Tommy John surgery:

"It was definitely a challenge, and my career as a whole has not gone exactly the way that I drew it up coming out of high school, but I've learned a lot of lessons in that journey and picked up a lot of different things along the way. Probably the biggest thing that I've learned has just been the power of perseverance and that failure isn't final and you're not locked into whatever position you're at. It's something coach Jay says a lot, it's never as bad as you think it is and it's never as good as you think it is, so the temptation is to think that I threw really well last night and I'm on top of the world, or when it's not going your way, which obviously I've spent a lot of time in that position, the temptation is to be woe is me and think it will never turn around, but it's just having that belief in the coaching staff and really just belief in myself that I can get where I want to."

On when he got hurt and when he had surgery:

"It was November 16th or Nov. 17 of 2023. It was our second game of the Fall World Series. I had the surgery Dec. 6 of 2023. I haven't had any other major injuries, but the elbow was always a nagging thing. It was something that I had initially injured my senior year of high school, and we evaluated some different options, got a couple of opinions, a couple that recommended surgery, and then by the time I was able to get an appointment with Dr. (Neal) ElAttrache, who at the time I wanted to have do the surgery and eventually did the surgery when I had it in 2023, my elbow didn't hurt. His instructions were give it another couple of weeks and then try throwing and see how it goes. I managed it the five years of my career and had gotten here and thrown really well my first fall and got to the end of the fall and reached back for a 3-2 fastball to Michael Lombardi. Struck him out for the record, so we went out on a win, but I felt it and I knew what I was dealing with at that point, and even my whole career I'd known I was going to need it at some point. It was kind of a management process, but the little thread that was still hanging on finally went."

On taking advantage of his last chance:

"It's a huge motivation. I've been around the block in my career and seen a thing or two. I don't think I've ultimately accomplished what I've wanted to accomplish. I've gotten to be a part of some really good teams and experienced some really cool things and am incredibly grateful for that, but there's still more I want to achieve and am excited to be a part of. I love my teammates and I love the group and I love the coaching staff that we have here and I'm really excited to play whatever role I can in helping us reach our goals."

On his role at Indiana in 2023:

"I was kind of a mid-relief guy. We made it to a regional and lost. I got hot in the bullpen about 17 times that weekend but didn't end up going in, which if you compared my career stats to how many innings I threw in the bullpen warming up, it's very different."

On success of teams at Ole Miss and Indiana:

"I have watched a lot of winning. That is true. I've been in the clubhouse for a lot of winning."

On Ole Miss years:

"I had a great experience there and I'm super grateful for my time there. I don't think it went the way that I or coach Bianco or any of the staff there necessarily had envisioned it when they were recruiting me out of high school. Consistency and executing multiple pitches in the strike zone, the game just didn't always shake out the way you want it to. I still have a tremendous relationship with everybody there and left on great terms. When we had our ring ceremony to get the national championship team back together, I went and gave everybody hugs. The plan all along was for me to be there for three years. The hope was that I would get drafted and move on, but I graduated from there."

On how he ended up at Ole Miss:

"I wasn't really looking at the SEC coming from California. I had grown up going to UCLA games. That was what I knew of college baseball. Watched some great baseball growing up. The standard Friday night in the Burton household was to go to Jackie Robinson Stadium and watch some baseball, but I was looking more at the high academic institutions, the Dukes and the Stanfords and places like that. Ole Miss saw a video of me on Twitter and they happened to be going to play Long Beach State two weeks later. They came and saw me throw a bullpen at 7 in the morning at an empty facility and recruited me off of that. Then I went down there and fell in love with the place. I'm so grateful for my time there. It was an amazing experience that I'm incredibly lucky to have had."

On Ole Miss going from mediocrity in season to College World Series champion in 2022:

"Absolutely. If there's one thing I can emphasize, I'm so grateful for the various lessons I've learned along my journey and things I hope I can help this team with that I've seen in my career before I got to Tulane. If I had to signal something from that experience, it would just be the perseverance piece where things weren't going our way but we knew we were a good ball club, we knew we had the talent, we knew we had the pieces to get where we wanted to go. I feel the exact same way about this team. We have all the talent in the world. We have all the pieces to get where we want to go. It's just a matter of getting everything lined up and executing on a day-in, day-out basis. I have no doubt that we'll get there and do that."

On what he does best on the mound:

"I'm dominating the strike zone with my best stuff and executing three pitches for strikes. Something coach Izzio and I have worked on a lot in the last three weeks was I came into college as a fastball-curveball guy and got away from that. I don't think in a Division I game I'd thrown a curveball before three weeks ago. so after my first outing against Nicholls this season, we were relying almost exclusively on my fastball, and he and I met the next morning and talked about adding a curveball. I was like I threw one back in the day, and he said I think that will help with the way my fastball plays. We can create a tunnel off of that with the downward, hard breaking ball. We got to work with that. Frankie Niemann as well has been a huge help with that, and that's really been a focus of developing that so we have something to keep guys off of my fastball. It's kind of a rising tide lifts all boats. You add something else to the arsenal and it takes them off my fastball. Now my fastball looks better even though it's the same fastball it was. Now they're not hunting just that. The development of that has been huge for me, and I have to credit coach Izzio with that. We've incorporated my changeup more and continued to work on that, refining that and having that be something that we can lean on really. That's been the biggest development for me over the last couple of weeks. I've gone from really a one-pitch pitcher, which I think I've thrown 90-percent fastballs in my career, and had some decent success doing it."

On fastball speed:

"It's been up to 95, but it's probably more 92, 94 than anything else. It's really more the peripheral metrics that make it as good a pitch as it is, but hitters at this level are so talented that if you're only throwing one pitch at them, regardless of the velocity, regardless of the induced vertical break, they can get to it, but now if you can force them to respect two or three pitches, it makes it a lot more difficult especially when you have the low-mid 90s in your back pocket. Now it gets up on you a little bit quicker."

On grad degree:

"I'm getting a master's in sports studies.:

On being two-time Academic All-SEC at Ole Miss:

"One thing my mama always emphasized, that was the deal we made was all right, if you're going to go to Ole Miss, you better get good grades. You're going to graduate in three years and if baseball doesn't work out, you can go to grad school. I was just excited to play baseball forever. I'm going to play college baseball forever."