‘Tell the Truth Monday:’ Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin recaps the Troy game, looks ahead to Central Arkansas
OXFORD, Miss. – On the bright side, Ole Miss defeated Troy 28-10 Saturday. But, then the players were tasked with facing the Rebels’ coaches on ‘Tell the Truth Monday.’
“We have ‘Tell the Truth Monday,’ you know it’s what the meetings are in the morning — the good, bad and ugly of the game,” Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin said in his weekly press conference.
“So, there’s some loafs in there, there’s some not effort that we’re looking for, and like I said — nothing against other places as everyone does things different — so I’m not saying we do it better, but we’re trying to break some habits. People just coach different on certain things, and I told them a couple of you guys come from other places and this is your one game. Alright, we told you it, you screwed up, you have to break these habits, or you know your playing time’s going to suffer.”
Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin on ‘Tell the Truth Monday’
While Kiffin was pleased with some areas of his team’s performance, there were areas in which he was less than satisfied. The Rebels led 21-3 at halftime, but after the break, Troy fought to a 7-7 tie. The inability to put the Sun Belt Conference team away in the third quarter forced Kiffin to leave his starters in the game.
“Always try to find something good with the bad and it (keeping the starters in) forced our guys to play a little longer than maybe we would have wanted to, but it also got them in shape,” Kiffin said. “So, they had to play longer and play in that heat and play into the fourth quarter, so that part of it was good,” he added.
QB Competition
Coach Kiffin reiterated sophomore Luke Altmyer will start the game Saturday against Central Arkansas, following Jaxson Dart’s start Saturday in the win over Troy.
“Like I’ve said before, we’d always like to have it figured out,” Kiffin said Monday of his QB situation. “This is not ideal. Luke will go first (versus UCA) in this game. That gives both guys an opportunity to go first. We’ll see how he plays. He didn’t get as many opportunities as we’d have liked.”
Newcomers sweep players of the game accolades
One of the other good things was the play of some of the newcomers to the Ole Miss roster. Zach Evans ran for 130 yards while true freshman Quinshon Judkins rushed for 87 yards and a touchdown.
Transfer linebacker Troy Brown had 11 tackles and a quarterback hurry, while fellow transfer Khari Coleman had collected eight tackles, five for loss and a pair of sacks. Fraser Masin averaged 41.2 yards on four punts.
Those players caught Kiffin’s attention.
“The defensive players of the game were the two new linebackers (Brown and Coleman). It’s actually interesting, I didn’t even realize it until I was reading them off to the players and (Judkins) was offense (player of the game) and the punter (Masin) was special teams, so our four players of the game were all brand new this year.“
With the first win in the books for the Rebels, they can now turn their attention to Central Arkansas which dropped its opener to Missouri State, 27-14.
Ole Miss and the Bears kickoff at 6 p.m. in Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The game will be streamed on SEC Network+.
(Feature image credit: Josh McCoy, Ole Miss)
Steve Barnes
Steve Barnes joins The Rebel Walk staff as a senior writer and brings a trifecta of journalistic experience. As a writer, he has covered college sports for Rivals.com, Football.com and SaturdayDownSouth.com as well as served as a beat writer for various traditional newspapers.
He has been a broadcaster for arena football and several national tournament events for the National Junior College Athletic Association as well as hosting various shows on radio.
A former sports information director at Albany (Ga.) State University and an assistant at Troy and West Florida, he has helped host many NCAA conference, regional and national events, including serving five years on the media committee of the NCAA Division II World Series.
Barnes, a native of Pensacola, Fla., attended Ole Miss in 1983-84, where his first journalism teacher was David Kellum. The duo has come a long way since that time.
He will bring a proven journalistic track record, along with a knack for finding the out-of-the-ordinary story angles to The Rebel Walk.
Barnes continues to reside in Pensacola a mere ten minutes from the beach because he does have taste and a brain.
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