Monday, December 5, 2011

Ole Miss has their man: Hugh Freeze

image Ole Miss introduced Arkansas State’s Hugh Freeze as their new football coach at a press conference in Oxford, Mississippi today. Freeze was the Red Wolves’ offensive coordinator for the 2010 season and replaced former head coach Steve Roberts.

In 2011, Freeze took ASU to a 10-2 record and 8-0 in the Sun Belt Conference, landing the program in the Godaddy.com Bowl.

Freeze comes to Ole Miss as the product of a high profile search committee, led by Ole Miss icon Archie Manning and FedEx executive Mike Glenn.

Freeze is no stranger to the program. He served as an assistant under former head coach Ed Orgeron, and promised during his introductory press conference that he would reinstitute his former mentor’s approach to recruiting (lights out, 12 months at a time).

David Cutcliffe—now the head coach at Duke—could coach but couldn’t recruit. Coach Orgeron could recruit, but couldn’t coach. The man Freeze is replacing—Houston Nutt—apparently didn’t do either recruiting or coaching very well. Thus, Freeze starts off trying to restock a very thin cupboard of talent in Oxford.  While he’s trying to catch up with the rest of the SEC in recruiting, he’ll be installing a new offensive system and with restoring fundamental football skills. That’s a big task in a place like Oxford.

Good luck and welcome to the SEC, Coach Freeze. Here’s hoping that your Saturday sermons are as good as the one you delivered in your presser.

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1 comments :

Unknown said...

Pretty sad, really. Because its pretty well understood that, "his former mentor’s approach to recruiting" involved lots of cash and payments through intermediaries.

Ole Miss would have a solid program right now if they had just kept David Buttcliffe.

I give the guy 3 years MAX before he has the Black Bears back on Probation.

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