The NCAA released its annual Academic Progress Rate report Wednesday, and none of Auburn's three major sports — football, men's basketball and baseball — received penalties.

Just finished an interview with Auburn left tackle Lee Ziemba. The subject of last year's penalties came up and Ziemba was refreshingly honest with his answers. Seems like he thinks they're overstated relative to the rest of his game and quite honestly, he doesn't like hearing about it all the time. A sampling:

(On last year's penalties)

"I didn't think they were … as bad as everybody makes it seem. Watch an NFL game. How many false starts do you see? Yeah, I messed up a few times. There's a lot of factors. It's a tough thing, but we're trying to get it fixed and corrected so it doesn't happen again. It's the game of football. It's a lot tougher than people think it is. It's not easy by any stretch of the imagination."

(Were they overstated?)

"Heck yeah. I hear it going to have supper with my girlfriend. Somebody stops me. It's ridiculous. Whatever. You get in this position, you're going to hear stuff like that. We're trying to get it fixed. I'm always trying to improve. I come here every day and work my tail end off to try and improve myself. That's my job."

(Do you feel underappreciated at Auburn?)

"I'm not doing it for appreciation. I'm doing it because I love playing football and I love Auburn University. I'm not doing it for anything other than that. I don't feel underappreciated. I feel good. I love being here. I wouldn't change anything about it. Yeah, I need to work on penalties. I have to work on a lot of different aspects of my game that people don't mention. It's not like I'm trying to mess up."

Well, we've gone from a lot happening here at Auburn to virtually nothing this week, but take heart Tigers fans: it's only about two months until the SEC media days in July.

In the interim, let's recap some of what happened over the weekend:

TIGERS WIN IRON BOWL OF BASEBALL ...

But they still aren't playing in this week's SEC tournament, which makes them long shots to play in the NCAA tournament, it would seem. First, the series against Alabama. For the first time that I can remember, Auburn pitched like crazy. Jon Luke Jacobs had a career game and Sean Ray has been unhittable of late (19 straight scoreless innings). Of course, Alabama, the SEC's best hitting team was bound to bust out, and it did with 16 hits and 13 runs in the series finale, but the Tigers still took two of three from their in-state rival, making John Pawlowski 3-1 against the Tide this season. For a team looking for something to build on, that's definitely a start. As for the NCAA tournament, Auburn's got some hoping and waiting to do. The field of 64 is not released until a week from now, after the conference tournaments are played. The Tigers (31-25, 11-19 SEC) have to hope for the favorites to do well in the conference tournaments and for no Cinderellas to emerge. Once you get past the poor SEC record, Auburn's peripheral numbers aren't terrible. The Tigers have an RPI of 28 according to WarrenNolan.com and a strength of schedule that ranks 7th nationally (It should also be noted that the SEC has the top RPI of any conference in the country). The last time they made the NCAAs, they had an RPI of 16 and a strength of schedule that was No. 1. I'm not nearly as versed in the baseball selection process as I am in basketball, but it looks like Auburn at least has a shot.

SOFTBALL'S SEASON ENDS

The Tigers won in the opening round of an NCAA Regional for the first time, blanking Iowa 1-0 behind Anna Thompson's three-hitter. But Auburn lost to top-seeded Georgia Tech and Boston University to watch its season come to an end. The team finished 30-29 this season, qualifying for the postseason for the second straight season and the fifth time in the last six years. Auburn has six postseason appearances all-time.

TAYLOR HEADING TO JUNIOR COLLEGE

As usual, our good friends at AuburnSports.com are all over the academic situations of some of the football team's signees. Last weekend, it reported that Reggie Taylor, a 5-foot-10, 170-pound cornerback from Fort Valley, Ga., will attend Mississippi Gulf Coast Community College in Perkinston, Miss., after failing to qualify. Taylor is a four-star recruit who was ranked by Rivals as the No. 34 cornerback in the 2009 class. So far this spring, defensive lineman Nick Fairley and wide receiver DeAngelo Benton were approved by the NCAA Clearinghouse. Everybody's still waiting word on quarterback Tyrik Rollison.

AUBURN HAS THREE 3-STAR RECRUITS SO FAR
MEN'S, WOMEN'S TRACK TEAMS COMPETE AT SEC CHAMPIONSHIPS

Auburn finished fifth overall on both the men's and women's sides of the SEC Track & Field Championships in Gainesville, Fla., on Sunday. It was the first time since 2003 that both teams finished in the top five. Raevan Harris won the high jump for her third career SEC title and Danielle Gilcrhist won the 400-meter hurdles for her first SEC title. The women's 4x100-meter relay team also took first place. That group included Shauquela Williams, Joanna Atkins, Cache Armbrister and CeCe Williams. There were a lot of names that placed in other events as well. Here's the university release if you're interested.

CHIZIK TO SPEAK AT COLUMBUS/PHENIX CITY AUBURN CLUB

Gene Chizik will speak at the Columbus/Phenix City Auburn Club this Wednesday at Green Island Country Club at 6:30 p.m. Here's the link, although it's a members-only event.

The NCAA's yearly Academic Progress Rate scores are in and three Auburn sports failed to make the grade: men's basketball, men's swimming and men's track.

The basketball team self-imposed the penalty last season and will have all of its scholarships available next season. Men's swimming was docked .99 of a scholarship (it is normally allowed 9.9) and men's track lost .03 of a scholarship (it is normally allowed 12.6).

“We are committed to ensuring that every student-athlete in every sport at Auburn is given the support they need to succeed academically," Auburn athletic director Jay Jacobs said in a quote released by the school. "While we are pleased that 18 of our 21 sports met the NCAA’s benchmark for academic progress, we will not be satisfied until all of our sports reach this level. Failure to meet the benchmarks set forth by the NCAA under its academic reform program is unacceptable. In this case, we decided to be aggressive in getting this behind us, so the penalties have already been taken for the current academic year.

“Our most important academic goal is the graduation of our student-athletes, and we are committed to seeing that they have every opportunity to earn their degrees.”

The APR was designed by the NCAA to measure academic progress. It allocates points for eligibility and retention. Basically, you get a point for every player that's academically eligible and a point for every player that stays at the school. The APR is the total points a team earns, divided by the total points possible, multiplied by 1,000.

The numbers released Wednesday are from a four-year period that ended with the 2007-08 academic year. Teams below an APR of 925 are subject to scholarship losses. A perfect score is 1,000.

Here's a link to a pdf of Auburn's team page. Here's an NCAA link in case you feel like looking up other schools.

These are Auburn's scores by sport:

MEN
Golf 967
Tennis 962
Football 949
Cross country 939
Baseball 938
Swimming 920
Basketball 899
Indoor track 894
Outdoor track 892

WOMEN
Golf 992
Cross country 978
Gymnastics 976
Soccer 976
Volleyball 967
Swimming 961
Softball 958
Tennis 957
Basketball 950
Indoor track 942
Outdoor track 941

And just for fun, here are all of the scores for the SEC's football teams:

FOOTBALL
Georgia 976
Vanderbilt 969
Florida 963
LSU 960
Alabama 955
Auburn 949
Tennessee 949
Kentucky 948
Mississippi State 933
South Carolina 929
Arkansas 927
Ole Miss 910 (three scholarships lost)

Apparently, Ole Miss was expecting today's news.

Auburn's Kerron Stewart won a silver medal in the 100-meter dash Sunday in Beijing, as part of a clean sweep by Jamaica in the event.

Stewart is the first Auburn woman ever to win an Olympic medal in track and field.

That's 14 medals now for current and former Auburn athletes.

Pardon the interruption from all the football talk, but I was just playing around online while Nick Saban was on the podium and came across this story from a local TV station.

Auburn track coach Ralph Spry's house was hit by lightning and burned down Tuesday evening. Thankfully no one was injured.

Link