The Ole Miss football team’s defense is forcing turnovers and scoring points.
Safety Cody Prewitt said the unit is relentless and stingy. It’s hard to argue with him after the defense helped No. 3 Ole Miss beat No. 14 Texas A&M 35-20 to improve to 6-0 for the first time since 1962.
Ole Miss returned an interception and a fumble for a touchdown in its first victory against Texas A&M on Saturday night. The opportunistic group has forced at least one turnover in 29 straight games — the second-best streak in the Football Bowl Subdivision.
“Our defense — I couldn’t be more proud of the staff and the kids and how they’re playing,” coach Hugh Freeze said.
The Rebels had two interceptions against the Aggies to give the team 12 this season, which is the most in the SEC and is tied for tops in the nation. They’ve returned three of those interceptions for touchdowns, also tied for first in the country.
Texas A&M entered the game averaging the third-most points in the nation at 47.8. But the Ole Miss defense held Texas A&M to its lowest score since finishing with 10 in a loss to LSU last year.
Ole Miss shut out Texas A&M in the first half, marking the first time in coach Kevin Sumlin’s head coaching career that his team hadn’t scored before halftime.
Ole Miss’ starting defense had allowed just one touchdown this season before Saturday night. They gave up three to the Aggies, but Freeze said they shouldn’t be blamed for all those scores.
“We stressed them (Saturday) in the second half because we didn’t stay on the field enough,” Freeze said. “The offense will take some blame for that.”
Quarterback Bo Wallace agreed.
“We’ve got to get better at giving our defense a rest,” Wallace said. “When they’re out there getting stops, we’ve got to do a better job of helping them out.”
Prewitt had an interception return for a touchdown against the Aggies for the 11th interception of his career and Keith Lewis scored his first career touchdown on a 21-yard fumble return. The defense also got a big game from sophomore linebacker Tony Conner, who had a career-high 11 tackles and leads the team with 36 tackles this season. Freshman defensive end Marquis Haynes has led the pass rush. He had two sacks Saturday and has a team-leading four this season.
Ole Miss, one of six remaining undefeated teams, knows things are only going to get tougher the longer it remains perfect.
“The more games we win, the bigger the target gets for us and we just have to do a good job of focusing on the task and each team,” linebacker Denzel Nkemdiche said.
Ole Miss will play host to Tennessee this week before a trip to LSU. The Volunteers are winless in conference play and are second to last in total yardage and points a game.
There was some talk Saturday night about whether Ole Miss deserves to be ranked No. 1 after back-to-back straight wins against top-15 opponents. But they stayed ranked No. 3 while Mississippi State, the only other undefeated team in the SEC, moved up to the top spot.
That doesn’t matter to Freeze and the Rebels, though.
“I’ll tell our team (Saturday), no poll, no media gets to decide for us how we define ourselves,” Freeze said. “We could lose every game left on our schedule probably with the league we play in, so we better just focus on us.”
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