Auburn to host JUCO center Emeka Opurum for visit
Auburn needs to fill the voids left behind by several playmakers from its Final Four squad, and one of the top junior college athletes could be a potential suitor to hold down the center position.
According to Nathan King of Auburn Undercover, Auburn will host Butler Community College center Emeka Opurum for a visit beginning Monday. Opurum, a 7-0 center originally from Nigeria, is a prime candidate to fill the space left behind by outgoing senior Dylan Cardwell.
As a freshman at Butler during the 2024-25 season, Opurum averaged 22 minutes per game while starting 25 of 33 games played. During his time on the floor, he scored 9.4 points, hauled in 8.1 rebounds, and blocked 2.6 shots per game. Opurum was also a sharpshooter by connecting on 67% of his shots from the field.
He recorded 10 games of double-digit rebounds and 13 games of double-digit point totals. His best game of the season came against Cowley College on March 5, when he scored 18 points and hauled in 19 rebounds. He followed up his strong performance three days later against Pratt College when he scored 20 points and secured seven rebounds.
Auburn will look to replace over half its roster due to the graduation of key stars, including Dylan Cardwell, Johni Broome, and Denver Jones, and the transfer of Jahki Howard. Auburn has earned the commitment of former UCF forward Keyshawn Hall, but is looking to add several more solid athletes like Opurum to fuel their dreams of returning to the Final Four next season.
Contact/Follow us @TheAuburnWire on X (Twitter), and like our page on Facebook to follow ongoing coverage of Auburn news, notes, and opinions. You can also follow Taylor on Twitter @TaylorJones__
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
21 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Why Auburn is completely justified in claiming 4 more national titles
The Auburn Tigers just closed the gap on the University of Alabama in the national title debate, and they didn't have to take a single snap to do it. Claiming four new national titles in one swoop, in the year 2025, has to rank as Auburn's greatest victory since the Kick Six. Thing is, based on the precedent already set down by that school across the state, Auburn is completely justified in claiming most, if not necessarily all four of the new titles. What's good for the Tide is good for the Tigers, after all. 'For too long, Auburn has chosen a humble approach to our program's storied history — choosing to recognize only Associated Press national championships,' Auburn athletic director John Cohen told On3 in announcing the new title windfall. Two banners, for the 1957 and 2010 seasons, hang in Jordan-Hare Stadium, and prior to this week the Tigers also acknowledged the 1913, 1983 and 1993 seasons as meeting national championship qualifications. [Join or create a Yahoo Fantasy Football league for the 2025 NFL season] Effective immediately, Auburn will now claim the 1910, 1914, 1958 and 2004 seasons as national championship ones, because, as Cohen notes, the Tigers' recognitions 'now align with the well-established standard used by the NCAA's official record book and our peers across the nation.' Auburn can justify the new rings on two fronts: first, because pre-21st-century college football was a chaotic nest of competing rankings and ad hoc justifications, and second, because Alabama already went there. Reason #1: Nobody knows anything The Tigers are taking advantage of 20th century college football's inherent absurdity. Then as now, the soul of college football lies in argument, the furious and fiery debate over unanswerable questions of strength and worth. But for all the good that the College Football Playoff and its predecessor postseason series have brought the game, they've robbed us of the debate of which team really would've come out on top in a winner-take-all matchup. When you determine your postseason rankings via polls rather than games, there's ample room for debate … and ample territory to claim championships on your own a century after the fact. Multiple contemporaneous and after-the-fact polls have attempted to make sense of college football's anything-goes era, some with far more statistical rigor and validity than others. Still, finding a poll that breaks your way is like finding a $100 bill on the ground; you might not be entitled to it, but you're going to keep it anyway. Auburn does have history in its corner. The Auburn of the 1910s was a fearsome unit, led by a diminutive Irishman named Mike Donahue and featuring players with spectacular names like Fatty Warren, Baby Taylor and Moon Ducote. In the three national championship seasons Auburn now claims, the Tigers won 22 games, lost one and tied one. Auburn and Alabama weren't playing at that time due to hard feelings on both sides, which was good news for the Tide, a mediocre 15-11 over the same stretch. The 1958 team played under a total blackout — no television, no bowl appearances — but still managed to go 9-0-1. That was only good enough for fourth in the final rankings, behind LSU (10-0), Iowa (7-1-1), and Army (8-0-1). The 2004 team went 13-0 but was not included in the two-team BCS, losing out on a berth by mere percentage points to USC and Oklahoma. Auburn and Oklahoma were tied going into the regular season's final week, but because Auburn didn't beat Alabama badly enough in the Iron Bowl, winning by 'only' eight points, Oklahoma moved ahead only to get shellacked by USC in the Orange Bowl. (Incidentally, I cover all this in my new — and apparently already dated — book Iron In The Blood: How the Alabama vs. Auburn Rivalry Shaped the Soul of the South, on sale next Tuesday. Feel free to correct the appropriate passages by hand.) Reason #2: Alabama did it first If you're mad at Auburn for claiming four new titles, you might want to reserve a good measure of your scorn for their rival. Back in the 1980s, an Alabama sports information director went diving in the record books and in one swoop, awarded Alabama five pre-Bear Bryant-era titles. These range from defensible and acceptable to absurd, like the 1941 season where Alabama went 9-2 and finished 20th (!) in the AP poll … but ranked No. 1, tied with Minnesota, in a single, much smaller poll. Nothing Auburn did Tuesday is anywhere near as egregious as that, and yet the 1941 team remains canonized on Alabama's Walk of Champions in front of Bryant-Denny Stadium. Now, granted, there's the question of an incredibly slippery slope here. If Auburn is going to claim a national title for 2004, why can't Utah — which also went undefeated at 12-0 — also claim one? Why couldn't 2017 Central Florida or 2023 Florida State, which, like 2004 Auburn, were both left out of the postseason dance despite going undefeated? For that matter, why can't Alabama claim the 1966 title and jump up to 19? That season, Alabama went 11-0 with six shutouts, but finished behind two teams — Notre Dame and Michigan State — that went 9-0-1 and played to a tie in late November. The suspicion, then and now, was that pollsters of the day were punishing the Crimson Tide for the state of Alabama's woeful record on civil rights in the turbulent 1960s. (Politics and sports have always intertwined.) Yes, Auburn's ring-grab could well set off a new wave of schools retroactively seeking to claim national titles won by their great-grandfathers. We could see new banners hanging in stadiums all across the country as enterprising researchers whip up dissertation-length justifications for why their school deserves titles from the days before cars or TV. But so what? We now have in place a means of determining, once and for all, a season's indisputable national champion. And as college football sins go, a bit of reapportioned valor ranks pretty low on the list. We've got to hold onto something to argue about, after all.
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
How did LSU football star LBs Harold Perkins Jr., Whit Weeks look during first practice?
BATON ROUGE — What does it mean for LSU football's defense to have a healthy Harold Perkins Jr. and Whit Weeks back in the fold? The linebacker duo took the field for the Tigers' first preseason practice Wednesday morning, the first time the two have practiced alongside one another in nearly a year. "Presence," LSU coach Brian Kelly said following LSU's practice about having Weeks and Perkins back. "We all appreciate that it's Day 1 and we're trying to get our feet in the ground and play football, but presence is impactful. LSU FOOTBALL LINEBACKER PRESEASON PREVIEW "We see them, you feel them, you hear them." In September, Perkins went down against UCLA in LSU's fourth game last season with an ACL tear and missed the remainder of the 2024 campaign. His injury forced Weeks into more of a prominent role within the Tigers' defense and he flourished, leading the team in tackles and clearing the next defender by nearly 40 stops. In the Texas Bowl in December, Weeks suffered a dislocated ankle, which needed surgery to repair. Both Perkins and Weeks missed spring practice and some more time this offseason going through rehab, but they have arrived at preseason practice fully healthy. The tandem were both named to the Dick Butkus Award preseason watch list Wednesday, an award that goes to college football's top linebacker. "When somebody is not around in a room, you can kind of feel the temperature change a little bit. The temperature is a little bit different when those two guys are in the room," Kelly said. "It's hard to replace great players but it's even harder to replace great leaders and those guys lead by example and make a huge difference." Cory Diaz covers the LSU Tigers for The Daily Advertiser as part of the USA TODAY Network. Follow his Tigers coverage on Twitter: @ByCoryDiaz. Got questions regarding LSU athletics? Send them to Cory Diaz at bdiaz@ This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: How LSU LBs Harold Perkins Jr., Whit Weeks looked during first practice
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Auburn just pulled the most Alabama move ever by claiming USC's 2004 national championship
Auburn just pulled the most Alabama move ever by claiming USC's 2004 national championship originally appeared on The Sporting News College football is a unique sport. For years, the top two teams in the country didn't even have to play each other to determine the national champion. Instead, the title was left up to voters in separate polls like the AP and Coaches. What's worse, some programs would simply declare themselves national champions, regardless of record or circumstance. Auburn is resurrecting that idea, apparently. The Tigers are now claiming four additional national championships from the 1910, 1914, 1958 and 2004 seasons, per The 2004 claim stands out most. That year, USC and Oklahoma met in the BCS national championship game, where the Trojans won convincingly. Both entered undefeated — but so did Auburn, which was left to face Virginia Tech in the Sugar Bowl. The Tigers beat the Hokies and finished No. 2 in the AP poll. Since then, USC has been forced to vacate its national title due to NCAA sanctions, and Auburn now deems itself the rightful champion of that season. 'For too long, Auburn has chosen a humble approach to our program's storied history – choosing to recognize only Associated Press national championships. Starting this fall, we have made the decision to honor the accomplishments of our deserving student-athletes, coaches, and teams from Auburn's proud history,' Auburn athletic director John Cohen said. 'Our visible national championship recognitions now align with the well-established standard used by the NCAA's official record book and our peers across the nation.' There's an added layer of irony here involving Auburn's greatest rival, Alabama. For years, the Tigers mocked the Crimson Tide, who have claimed 18 national titles. Though a few of those come with eye rolls. 'The best part about this entire situation of Auburn adding titles is that fans have been joking with Alabama over the years about how many 'championships' the Tide has claimed over the past 100 years,' OutKick's Trey Wallace wrote. 'Oh, and the fact that Tommy Tuberville is now a national-championship-winning football coach. So, the potential Governor of the State of Alabama can now claim a title, which should make for a few interesting campaign commercials.' Only in college football. Only in the SEC. Only in Alabama.
