The Ole Miss football team could use a break.
Reeling from back-to-back losses to Arkansas and LSU, Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze would enjoy a little extra time to help get his team back on track.
Instead, Ole Miss’ difficult stretch against ranked opponents will continue at 6:15 p.m. Saturday when it plays host to No. 15 Auburn (5-2, 3-1 Southeastern Conference) at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium in Oxford. The SEC Network will broadcast the game live.
Then-No. 23 Ole Miss (3-4, 1-3) dropped a 38-21 decision to then-No. 25 LSU on Saturday night. The Tigers shut the Rebels out in the second half for the first time this season.
“Not the outcome we wanted Saturday night in Tiger Stadium,” Freeze said. “Such as the life in the SEC West, and it doesn’t get any easier moving forward. Auburn is an outstanding football team, maybe the best defense as far as points per game we’ve seen. Only giving up 14 points a game is unheard of almost these days.
“You watch them on tape and you see why, and now their rushing game is back to what they’ve been known for, so they are an outstanding football team that will provide us another great challenge. I am glad it is at home. We are glad to be back home in front of our fans in our stadium, and hopefully that will give us an extra amount of energy as we go in another SEC West battle.”
The defensive lapses have been hard to explain for an Ole Miss team that was ranked in the top 15 in the preseason and considered an outside candidate for the College Football Playoff.
“It’s disappointing, but when you look at the tapes of the teams we’ve played its easy to see that you can lose those games,” Freeze said. “I’ll put it in baseball terms, we can’t afford right now — with the issues that we may have at certain positions or talent level compared to others — we can’t afford to throw 75 mph on the corner of the plate and get by; we have to throw 96 mph on every play to be able to compete and have a chance to win some of the games we are in right now.
“We can’t afford to make some of the mistakes we are making, whether it’s defensively on a blown coverage, or whether it is a turnover because it’s a bad decision. We can’t afford to do those things, or a bad call by a coach. I think it is a combination of the early losses that were very disappointing, key injuries when losing (Ken) Webster and Fadol (Brown) and Jordan Wilkins and the others, D.K. Metcalf and Jordan Sims, in the first quarter the other night. I think it’s a combination of those things.”
Auburn has turned a slow start into a national ranking and a chance to compete for SEC Western Division crown. Auburn beat Arkansas 56-3 Saturday afternoon at home. It will try to keep that momentum going against an Ole Miss team that is fighting for bowl eligibility.
“When the expectations get so high and you don’t meet them it is easy for the frustration or the pressure to feel like you have to perform at a certain level,” Freeze said. “I think all of us can feel that at certain times, but I try to embrace it and I tell the team that’s a good thing that people expect that of you, but being that we’re playing a lot of young kids in certain spots that certainly is a part of it. You’ve got to embrace it and move forward, but that could be some of it.
“That’s not something they verbalized to us. I think a lot of it and part of the equation you have to put in there, I don’t think people give maybe enough credit to LSU or to Alabama or to Florida State. Those teams can block you, too, and we can fit it wrong or we can blow an assignment, but there’s sometimes that they did a good job. They are going to do a good job enough from their talent level, like Auburn also, we can’t afford to give them anything and unfortunately we have done our share of that also.”
Freeze remains optimistic because he knows the Rebels. He feels the team has to turn the attention to detail up a notch.
“We’ve got to coach better, that is part of the equation,” Freeze said. “(So many things) factor into the disappointment, but we are not the first to experience that and probably won’t be the last time we experience it in this league. We’ve got to fight.”
“We’re disappointed we didn’t make enough plays. Our coaches are disappointed and that’s part of the life that we live in this conference. We’ve got to rebound and continue to work and hopefully the leaders will lead and we look forward to another challenge at home this Saturday.”
Follow Dispatch Scott Walters on Twitter @dispatchscott
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
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