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Trick or Treat! It’s Halloween week in the SEC.
Saturday’s slate features Georgia’s annual showdown with Florida in Jacksonville along with Tennessee’s traditional battle with Kentucky. Ole Miss has a chance to build on its convincing victory over Texas A&M last week with a visit to Auburn while Vanderbilt’s reward for beating Missouri last Saturday is a trip to Houston to face the unbeaten and 18th-ranked Cougars.
Here’s what the league’s coaches had to say about their teams’ respective games this weekend:
Bret Bielema, Arkansas: “Every report says that he’s probably going to be able to play again,” Bielema said of Razorbacks running back Rawleigh Williams, who is out for the season after suffering a neck injury in the Hogs’ 54-46 home victory over Auburn in four overtimes last week. “It won’t be until next year … When you’re talking about the severity and the injury that it is, there’s a lot of time between now and then to figure out what he wants to do and what his family wants to do.” Arkansas hosts Tennessee-Martin on Saturday.
Gus Malzahn, Auburn: “We’re starting to get into a little bit of a groove,” Malzahn said. “That comes with explosive plays, and the last two games we’ve had more explosive plays. When that happens, we get tempo and can get into our pace. The good thing offensively is we have a lot of room to grow.”
Jim McElwain, Florida: “This is why you get into it — to play in games like this,” McElwain said. “If you’re not prepared and you’re scared, then this probably isn’t the place for you because this is the expectation of the University of Florida.”
Mark Richt, Georgia: “They have great personnel,” Richt said of Florida. “They’ve got big, lean, physical guys that can change direction and tackle in space. They’ve got linemen that can hold the point also, get off blocks and make plays.”
Mark Stoops, Kentucky: “To credit Tennessee, to play a quality team like Alabama, to know that you’re one or two plays away from winning shows you how close they are,” said Stoops, whose Wildcats host the Volunteers on Saturday night. “We’ve been in that situation before this year against some good teams, but does it really matter? Do y’all really care? At the end of the day, it’s a win or a loss, and that’s how we’re judged. That’s how we look at it. I’m sure they’re very disappointed that they didn’t make a couple of plays to win, but I know what type of team they are regardless of their record. I know how good Tennessee is.”
Hugh Freeze, Ole Miss: “We’re not into revenge games,” said Freeze, referring to the fact that Rebels wideout Laquon Treadwell will be facing Auburn for the first time since suffering a season-ending broken leg against the Tigers last year. “We won’t talk about that. We’ll talk about the next opportunity to win a conference game, which is very important for us. It’s important to our people and our university and our football program. We really won’t talk about last year at all. We’ll just talk about this is the team we’re facing.”
Shawn Elliott, South Carolina: “That’s what we’re here to do — play the game of football, focus on it, get those distractions out of the way, and now we’ve got a full week of preparation where we can solely focus in on Texas A&M and what we need to do to get better and try to accomplish that,” Elliott said. “It was fly by the seat of your pants the week before. So this time, we had a little bit of preparation, a little bit of normalcy.”
Butch Jones, Tennessee: “When you really look at it, we play winning football and put ourselves in position to win football games for 56 minutes,” Jones said. “Now how do we continue to elevate our play to finish games off and close games?”
Kevin Sumlin, Texas A&M: “We’ve got a lot of things to fix,” Sumlin said. “In order to do that, we’ve got to give them the right plan. We’ve got to show some leadership. We’ve got to get our guys pointed in the right direction.”
Derek Mason, Vanderbilt: “We are going to look at what are Johnny’s strengths and what are Kyle’s strengths, and we’re going to play to those,” Mason said, referring to Commodores QBs Johnny McCrary and Kyle Shurmur. “Well, is there enough time (for Houston) to game plan all that when you look at it defensively? It’s really tough. Are you game planning spread, or are you game planning West Coast offense?”
Stan Chrapowicki is a contributing writer for Saturday Down South. He covers SEC football, Alabama and Auburn.
