This Monday had a zip-a-dee-do-da kind of feel to it. My oh my what a wonderful day. Ole Miss is 3-0, ranked 10th in the country, and enjoying recognition from around the country. We've got two weeks to soak up this sun before Memphis comes calling on September 27 (6:30 p.m. FSN). On that date the Rebels will look to move to 4-0 for the first time since 1970. With a win over the Tigers, Chris Fowler, Kirk Herbstreit and Lee Corso will likely set up shop in the Grove as ESPN's College GameDay on October 4th would become a virtual certainly.
Yes, indeed, it seems like there's plenty of sunshine headed our way. The Ole Miss offense, led by senior quarterback Bo Wallace, is flying mighty high these days. Wallace currently leads the country in completion percentage (75.5) and ranks 5th in pass efficiency (190.0). He's also in the Top 5 in yards per attempt. At his current pace, Wallace would finish the season with 307 completions, 4,433 yards and 39 touchdowns (each would be a school record) and that's playing less than three quarters of football per game. Freeze has pulled Wallace with 10 minutes to play in the 3rd quarter each of the last two weeks.
The defense has looked darned good, too, treating Boise State, Vanderbilt and Louisiana-Lafayette almost like play-things.
With a high-flying offense and that stingy defense the Rebels seem almost unstoppable in this part of the season. The Top 10 ranking confirms that many others feel the same way. But if you think Hugh Freeze and his quarterback are congratulating themselves on their most recent accomplishments, think again.
Freeze, who sounds more and more like Nick Saban every day, wants the focus to be on the process.
"The trouble with being ranked is it’s a good thing, but all you ever worry about is the rankings or the scoreboard and what it says, you lose sight of the process and it’s just result-oriented, and that’s certainly not what we are about in our program," Freeze said. "We hope those things go our way, and we hope those things stay that way, but I’ve seen already in a short period of time a lot of people that love this program so dearly get really caught up in that, and we’ve got to maintain our focus on the process. That’s what we want to be about and treating each play as a life of its own and each day and then looking up and seeing what the end result is. But if that’s all you worry about and that’s the single goal, man, you miss the joy of the journey. The joy is in the daily enjoyment of things."
Wallace echoed his coach.
“We haven’t done anything yet," Wallace said. "We’ve won one SEC game, meat of the schedule is coming up. We’re playing good ball but nowhere close to perfect, and that’s what we’re trying to be. We can stand back and look at first three games, but we have to bring it every single day.”
With the October 4th prize fight against Alabama almost within reach, there's the obvious concern about overlooking Memphis. Freeze's solution? The process. Lots and lots of process.
“Certainly the process is what I’ll reiterate to them," Freeze said. "It’s about today and not what didn’t go right yesterday. It’s about what we do today to make sure we’re prepared for next step in this journey which is September 27. We’ll constantly remind them of that, and hopefully we continue to have some maturity with leadership that helps us in the locker room because it’s certainly distracting to hear about things that aren’t next in the journey.”
Fortunately, the team seems keenly aware of where its focus needs to be.
"Our emphasis will be completely on Memphis and improving to 4-0," said Denzel Nkemdiche.
That's great to hear, but as a fan of a team that's only been ranked in the Top 10 one other time since 1970, I plan to enjoy these next couple weeks.
Zip-a-dee-doo-da...Zip-a-dee-ay!
