OXFORD
Ole Miss football coach Hugh Freeze walked ashen-faced and slump-shouldered into the auditorium for his post-game news conference and promptly announced he was converting to Islam.
OK. So maybe his team’s 53-52 overtime loss to Arkansas on Saturday wasn’t enough to make Freeze lose his religion — his breakfast, lunch and dinner, maybe, but not his religion. Good thing, he’s gonna need it, I suspect.
The Rebels didn’t just lose a game in a most bizarre, humbling, and troubling fashion. They also lost any real prospects of winning the Southeastern Conference’s Western Division. Now 7-3 and 4-2 in the SEC, the best the Rebels can hope for is a tie for the West. That would require some outside help, of course, along with Ole Miss wins against LSU and Mississippi State.
The Rebels probably have enough offense to win those games. Play as they did on defense Saturday, and the Rebels likely will end the regular season on a three-game losing streak.
Landshark? It’s just a brand of beer these days.
Behind the sterling play of quarterback Chad Kelly and wide receiver extraordinaire Laquan Treadwell, Ole Miss rolled up 590 yards, outrushed the Razorbacks by 60 yards, scored touchdowns on all seven trips in the red zone, twice trapped Arkansas players on plays that would have ended the game and still lost.
How does that happen?
“Gut wrenching,” Freeze said. “It will test everything about us.”
Mostly it will test the patience of Rebel fans, who are wondering whatever happened to that “Landshark” defense, you know, the defense that was supposed to carry the Rebels to a long-coveted SEC title while the offense played a supporting cast with a new untested quarterback.
Ten games into the season as the Rebels head to their bye week, it’s pretty clear if Ole Miss wins, it will be in spite of its defense, not because of it.
“We just struggled in too many one-on-one situations,” said Freeze, who seemed as mystified by the Rebels’ defense as anyone. “The number of big plays we gave up was disheartening.”
Disheartening.
As poorly as the defense played — or to be fair, as brilliantly as Arkansas quarterback Brandon Allen was (52 of 71 for 442 yards and six touchdowns passes) — Ole Miss needed one play to win.
Even that was more than it could manage.
After taking a 52-45 lead in the first overtime, Ole Miss had Arkansas on a fourth-and-25 from its 40. Allen’s pass to Hunter Henry was far short of the first-down line, so he flung it over his head blindly, just beyond the fingertips of an Ole Miss defensive end (naturally) and into the hands of running back Alex Collins, the one Arkansas player who knew what to do with ball. It turned out to be a 29-yard play and gave Arkansas new life. When Allen hit Drew Morgan for a 9-yard score to close the gap to 52-51, the Hogs elected to go for the two-point conversion and a win.
On that conversion attempt, Marquis Haynes sacked Allen for what appeared to be the game-saving defensive play. Nope. Haynes was called for a facemask penalty. On the next attempt, Allen dove into the end zone for the victory.
After the game, a reporter asked Freeze to evaluated the performance of Tony Connor. Under normal circumstances this would have been a perfectly reasonable inquiry. Conner, one of the Rebels top defenders, had missed the previous six games. His return was notable.
But not now, not after this.
Asking Freeze to evaluate a Ole Miss defender on this night was kind of like asking Mrs. Lincoln how she enjoyed the play, as the saying goes.
Freeze muttered something about how it’s difficult to evaluate a player in game situations, that he would need to look at the game film, etc.
Given the situation, it was a testament to Freeze’s piety; Any other coach would have gone all jihad on that reporter.
No, Freeze hasn’t lost his religion.
That’s about the only thing the Rebels didn’t lose Saturday.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected]
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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