Hugh Freeze to Ole Miss and What It Means For SEC West
By Kyle Kensing
Hugh Freeze inherited a 4-8 Arkansas State football program that had last (only) bowled in 2005. It took Freeze one season to completely reverse the RedWolves’ course, winning a Sun Belt championship with a perfect 8-0 conference mark and 10-2 overall mark.
ASU won in large part due to an efficient, uptempo offense. Freeze implemented his system in a 2010 season that despite their 4-8 record, exhibited the RedWolves’ potential. Arky State lost four games in the ’10 season by single digits and this season returned an experienced corps. Players like Ryan Aplin familiar with Freeze’s system excelled. ASU ranked No. 25 in yards compiled, 89 spots ahead of Ole Miss, the program that today tabbed Freeze to turn it around.
Freeze was an assistant at Ole Miss four years ago, ironically a member of the last dismissed Rebel coaching staff under Ed Orgeron. The cloud that loomed over Oxford when Freeze left for Division II Lambuth isn’t the one lingering now, but the circumstances are similar. The 2011 Rebels finished the SEC season without a conference win, like the ’07 version. Ole Miss struggled both offensively and defensively each season, but regime change injected immediate life last time. Freeze could do the same.
ASU’s offensive prowess was apparent this season with a style that should translate easily enough to what Houston Nutt was running in the Rebels’ more productive 2008 and 2009 campaigns. Aplin excelled as a dual threat quarterback in the fashion Jeremiah Masoli was expected to, but didn’t in 2010. Freeze implemented a scheme that made Aplin truly dual threat. Opposing defenses were unable to render him one dimensional, a problem that plagued Ole Miss through its last three quarterbacks (Jevan Snead in ’09, Masoli in ’10, Randal Mackey this season).
Now, the buck stops with a head coach, but his staff is as significant a factor on a program’s success as the head coach himself. Freeze’s proven ability to surround himself with great minds is the chief reason Rebel backers should revel in his hire.
More key to the RedWolves season than its offensive eruption was its defensive turnaround. ASU was among the very worst defenses a season ago, yet finished 2011 among the very best. Behind the 180 were first year coaches Dave Wommack and Tom Allen. Wommack was hired as defensive coordinator, bringing with him three decades of experience. Allen served as Freeze’s associate head coach and linebackers coach.
The duo gave the RedWolves defense two perspectives, both from the well-experienced and youthfully energized. Ole Miss could use such a well-rounded approach after it as brutalized in this year’s SEC.
Of course, the SEC is a much different beast than the Sun Belt. Freeze will face a much steeper learning curve in Oxford than he did in Jonesboro, so immediate results shouldn’t be expected. But he has the tools to turn the Rebels into something they have rarely been: a player in the deep SEC West.