Five more wins.
While fans and national writers realize how close the No. 3 Ole Miss football team is to an undefeated regular season, players and coaches are focused on one more win.
Ole Miss will try to extend its unbeaten start to the season at 6:15 p.m. Saturday (ESPN) when it plays No. 23 LSU in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.
“It’s always an exciting time around this place when you enter into a game that is considered to be one of your historical rivals like LSU,” Ole Miss coach Hugh Freeze said. “They’ve been extremely talented through the years. Coach (Les) Miles has done a phenomenal job. Even though they’ve had some ebbs and flows this season, they seem to be figuring them out quite nicely, and they’re playing their best football of the year.”
Ole Miss improved to 7-0 and 4-0 in the Southeastern Conference on Saturday with a 34-3 home victory against Tennessee. The win helped Ole Miss turn its focus to the final five games of the regular season, which includes two road trips — this one and a game at Arkansas on Nov. 22.
“We’re excited to be 7-0 going into that game, but we also understand the same attention to preparation will have to even be heightened more going into that environment and playing in there against such an athletic, physical, and quality football team,” Freeze said. “They have tremendous young talent on their team. It’s going to be a great, great challenge. It will be one that we’ll make our kids very aware of the history of this rival. They’ll understand it quite clearly. Hopefully we’ll have our best-effort plan.
“There were a lot of great things on film from last week. I’m proud of the way our kids continued to battle without getting frustrated when things aren’t going quite your way as you would want them to. They pushed through and found a way to pull away another SEC battle.”
Ole Miss defeated then-No. 6 LSU 27-24 last season in Oxford. Earlier this season, LSU was in the top 10 when it suffered a home loss to Mississippi State. Trouble continued the following week with a 41-7 road loss at Auburn. Since then, the Tigers have made some personnel changes and responded with back-to-back wins against Florida (30-27) and Kentucky (41-3) to re-enter the national rankings.
Freeze expects a much different LSU (6-2, 2-2 SEC) than the one that lost back-to-back conference games to start the season.
“The last two weeks they’ve gotten back to doing their bread and butter,” Freeze said. “That’s physical, control of the clock. They’re able to run the football with the outstanding backs they have. Defensively, they’re changing some things around that you haven’t seen them do a lot of before. They’ve become very multiple the last two weeks, particularly last week. They’re doing more odd fronts. They’re giving you different looks in the back end, which you didn’t get all of that in the past.
“They still could line up and beat you. They’re making it even more difficult now by moving around and doing some of the things they’re doing. We have a lot to prepare for of the offensive side. Defensively, I wouldn’t think it’s going to take a whole lot of extra time planning. They are who they are. It’s very difficult to stop. There’s not a lot of mystery to it. They can do that and still be successful.”
Ole Miss trailed Tennessee 3-0 after one quarter and led 14-3 at halftime. In the second half, Bo Wallace and his talented group of receivers took over. Wallace was 13 of 28 for 199 yards and two touchdowns. The senior was sacked five times. Former Noxubee County standout Vince Sanders led the receivers with four catches for 108 yards.
“I’m really pleased with that group, between Vince (Sanders), Cody (Core), Quincy (Adeboyejo), and Evan (Engram),” Freeze said. “We know Laquon (Treadwell) is going to get his attention. We’re not quite sure what different teams are going to do each week. We have to figure that out because it does have an impact on the things we want to do and the matchups we want to get. I’m big on trying to find the best matchup. Maybe that’s why that group is a little bit different each week.
“Once we find production, we try to go after it. Last week, we felt like Vince had a good chance at winning some one-on-ones. We got in that scenario a couple of times. We felt the same way about Evan. If we could get him in certain looks that he could win, also, just because of the way they are aligned. It’s not that we didn’t think the others could. That’s probably why it fluctuates between different people each week.”
Wallace is looking forward to returning to Tiger Stadium and having a chance to make amends for a heartbreaking defeat the team suffered there in 2012.
“I remember the atmosphere,” Wallace said. “We were playing really well. We were young and really didn’t realize what we were doing. We were out there just playing as hard as we could. It’s fun to play down there.”
n In related news, defensive end Marquis Haynes was named Southeastern Conference Freshman of the Week on Monday.
Haynes had a team-high two and a half sacks to lead a defense that didn’t allow a touchdown against Tennessee. He also had five tackles, a forced fumble, a fumble recovery, and a quarterback pressure against the Vols. This comes one week after being named SEC Defensive Lineman of the Week for his two-sack effort at Texas A&M.
n Also, Ole Miss’ game against Auburn on Nov. 1 will kick off at 6 p.m. or 6:15 p.m. on ESPN or ESPN2, the Southeastern Conference announced Monday.
The SEC and ESPN will make its final decision after the games this Saturday. The Arkansas at Mississippi State game also is being considered for those slots.
Follow Scott Walters on Twitter @dispatchscott
Scott was sports editor for The Dispatch.
You can help your community
Quality, in-depth journalism is essential to a healthy community. The Dispatch brings you the most complete reporting and insightful commentary in the Golden Triangle, but we need your help to continue our efforts. In the past week, our reporters have posted 41 articles to cdispatch.com. Please consider subscribing to our website for only $2.30 per week to help support local journalism and our community.