No. 15 Ole Miss Prepares for Liberty

By Adam Brown
Sports Editor
adam.brown@hottytoddy.com

Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin met with members of the media on Monday for his weekly press conference as the Rebels prepare for their upcoming matchup against the Liberty Flames on Saturday.

Ole Miss (6-2, 2-2 SEC) is coming off a loss to the Auburn Tigers and looks to bounce back at home.

“It was a disappointing outcome to the game. We did not feel that, for whatever reason, we didn’t feel like we had great energy, which has not been an issue here,” Kiffin said. “We had a lot of opportunities in the game, our defense played well, we did not play well on offense in critical situations, and kind of like the Alabama game we lost the two games where we struggled on our fourth-down conversions, so those are a big deal.”

Kiffin added that the defense played well against the Tigers.

In the game, quarterback Matt Corral got injured his ankle and came back in to finish the game.

“Yeah, he did not do anything today. I was surprised he came back because it looked like it was really bad, obviously when it happened it looked season-ending, broken,” Kiffin said. “That’s how he felt it was. Luckily it wasn’t so he was able to come back in.”

This weekend, the Rebels step out of the conference for the final time in the regular season against the Flames. Ole Miss is dealing with a lot of injuries on the offense.

“With where we are injury-wise, we said hey have you ever experienced anything like this and I said not on one side of the ball,” Kiffin said. “For whatever reason, they’re just all on offense. And even some that are playing, like our quarterback, even some that are playing aren’t close to 100 percent.”

Liberty comes into Oxford with a 7-2 overall record led by quarterback Malik Willis who is a dual-threat as he has passed for 1,986 yards with 21 touchdowns and rushed for nine scores.

Kiffin said that we will be facing a first-round draft pick and it will be like facing another SEC team.

On Saturday, coach Hugh Freeze makes his return to Oxford. Kiffin has been amazed at how Freeze gets his teams to play on game day.

“I was just always amazed by how well they played on game day. Just kind of the fresh theory, knowing their practice plans versus ours at Alabama, the difference in the ways the programs were run,” Kiffin said. “His players, he had them fresh and ready to go on game day. For them to lose only two regular-season games and for them to only lose three regular-season games since I’ve been here at Ole Miss, he just does a great job at getting them ready to go on game day.”

Kickoff for Ole Miss and Liberty is set for 11 a.m. on the SEC Network.