When Auburn and Kentucky meet on the diamond Friday in Cliff Hagan Stadium, it will be a battle between SEC divisional cellar dwellers.
The Tigers (15-14, 2-7 SEC) and the Wildcats (16-14, 2-7 SEC) have lost a combined 13 of their last 16 games, including the last 12 SEC games.
Both Mississippi State and No. 1 Vanderbilt swept three-game series against the Tigers, while No. 24 Alabama and No. 3 South Carolina swept three-game series against the Wildcats.
"When you play good teams--Vanderbilt is a very good team--when you have opportunities, you got to seize those opportunities," said head coach John Pawlowski after Sunday's 6-2 loss to the Commodores. "We didn't this weekend, and now we've got to find a way to regroup. We've got some guys that need to improve.
"We need to look at everything and evaluate everything. We'll get better. I'm confident in this team."
Casey McElroy, junior second baseman for Auburn, said the Tigers are just not playing well right now.
"It's a long season, but we try to take it one game at a time," McElroy said. "The best thing for us to do right now is just to flush it (the loss) and get our minds right."
Auburn will encounter a Kentucky team fresh off a 15-2 win Tuesday against Xavier University.
The Tigers enter Friday's game looking to rebound from a 14-6 loss Tuesday to the No. 20 Troy State Trojans.
The Tigers gave up 13 two-out runs to the Trojans, and three errors by Auburn resulted in seven unearned runs.
Auburn struggled to get out of innings last weekend against Vanderbilt as well.
Pawlowski identified two priorities the Tigers must focus on to improve.
"We've got to go out, and we've got to pitch better," Pawlowski said. "You know, I think we've struggled in spots, pitching-wise. Trying to get out of innings--that's the whole key is pitching out of trouble.
"When you get guys in scoring position, we've got to find a way to step up and come up with a big hit.
Pawlowski said changes will be made and he will continue to experiment with the lineup.
"We're not going to sit still," Pawlowski said. "We're going to try to adjust things. We're going to maneuver guys around. We'll change the rotation around."
One risk in moving players between positions is that can make it difficult to establish continuity.
McElroy said moving positions can sometimes make it difficult to get continuity.
"It's a complete team effort. I just think we have a lot of pieces that we need to put together for us to really click."
Pawlowski said he wants to get to a point where there's some consistency, where the players understand where they're playing.
"For our team, there is a lot of baseball left to be played," Pawlowski said. "Unfortunately, we certainly have not gotten off to the start that we certainly hoped for."
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