Sani-Freeze

Bruce got the unofficial 214th win in epic fashion, beating Florida for the SEC Tournament championship.

Bruce tied Joel Eaves (unofficially) for the all-time win lead at Auburn today.

My wife and daughters watched only that one drive at the end of the bowl game, and they are all fully expecting him to be the starter next year.

He's still (officially) 25 behind Eaves. So he could still take the unofficial top spot this year but it will be next season before he officially gets to 214.

I emailed Marlene Navor and she clarified - I fixed it in the original post. Thanks

Updated the original post - Pearl unofficially hit 200 with Tuesday's win over aTm.

Vandy was 2-10 and didn't put up any fight against AU or anyone else. They would have gotten whipped by NM St. who was much more disciplined and had a decent QB. Ark and Miss St. weren't too much better than Vandy. It's not an excuse - just an opinion that our buy game opponent was actually better than a few of our conference opponents this year. The SEC was a little less powerful this year and the bottom was absolute trash. Every AU coach has flirted with the disastrous cupcake loss (Utah St, Jax St, Ga St just in the past 12 years), and we finally had a year where the talent didn't overcome the sleepwalk. I'm not happy with the results this year either but some of the hot takes about Freeze seem a little over the top given the roster he inherited. I would hope he is capable of coaching and recruiting at the same time and expect better results on the field this year.

I agree that is definitely a concern and something to watch going forward. Basically getting up for the big games and then pulling a no-show in others. Tuberville was bad about that too. But outside his three-year stretch of 13-0, 9-3, 11-2 from 2004-06, AU hasn't had anything resembling sustained success since the late 80s. I'm still hopeful that with strong recruiting, Freeze can coach them well enough to bring that going forward.

I mean it's a relatively moot point, but I believe they would have beaten Vandy, Ark and maybe Miss St too. I'm not excusing the loss at all - just saying I think they were better than some of the other teams we actually did beat.

This is a fair take - They still forced turnovers and scored a ton of points though against solid Bama defenses, and with a talent disadvantage. So you can look at it either way. Given the performance this year against Bama, Hugh seems to give Saban fits so I'm looking at that as a positive sign.

You keep contradicting yourself. This current roster would have lost that Jax St game you mentioned in a blowout (Gus needed overtime to win with a bunch of talented kids). You want to look at the opponents without also acknowledging that AU had a stacked roster of blue chip talent all of those seasons. We don't have it now.

Your memory is not great then - but also you are comparing results of very talented AU rosters to this one, which is apples to oranges.

Ole Miss was unranked when they played in 2016 and came within a score of beating #2 Alabama. That is decent coaching.

I said he out-coached Saban three consecutive times - referring to Ole Miss having a handful of blue chips on the roster vs 85 for Bama. He won two of the three and came very close in the other one. As to the Gus reference - The other poster said Gus didn't have deflated performances and seems to have forgotten a ton of losses like Tennessee 2018 (when they hadn't won a conference game in years), UGA in 15 and 16 when they were lousy, UCF, Minnesota, etc. even in years when we had plenty of talent.

I think you missed my point - he has already proven that he can coach at prior stops so I'm willing to look at the NM St. game as a fluke and expect better results going forward. He tried to fill a bunch of holes with transfers and that can often create poor team chemistry (basically what Fairweather was alluding to in his comments). You literally said we need a new leader which I think is quite an overreaction after one year. I also think it's worth noting - As embarrassing as the NM St. loss was because of the name, they were a much better team than most of the ones we actually beat this year (like Ark and Vandy). We just aren't good right now. I think it will take until 25 to fix this roster.

Honestly I think we are pretty close to Sun Belt talent on both lines of scrimmage right now. Our D-line is soft as it can be, especially without Harris. I know a couple of the transfer DTs were former blue-chip recruits but they can't play.

Gus had plenty of no-shows, including almost every UGA game and a bunch of bowls like this one too. I don't like the recruiting excuse either, but Freeze has also taken some responsibility and repeatedly said he didn't do a good enough job coaching this year. We know he has some coaching acumen after out-coaching Saban in three consecutive matchups while at Ole Miss. So I think it's still a bit early to draw any extreme conclusions. I'm resolved to giving him three full seasons to show us what he's capable of doing with his own roster.

UGA folks think he's a Dawg for what it's worth.

Has anyone else bought tickets yet? The site keeps timing out (immediately) before I can confirm.

Yeah maybe I should put an asterisk on it... But I watched those wins and Wiki still counts them so I figured that was basically a bulletproof case for counting them.

I don't see anything about it on their website, and the official AU site just says TBD.

That's absolutely it. I'd rather listen to Fran Drescher, Joan Rivers, Miley Cyrus, Kenny Chesney... literally any terrible voice would still be better than Beth Mowins.

Woodson seems to be doing a good job there. They will be a tough matchup if Xavier Johnson is back healthy. My wife is a Hoosier fan so someone will be sleeping on the couch. I sure hope it's me.

They have some presale tickets available now for $30-$50 with the promo code HHG. https://holidayhoopsgiving.com/college-events/ We are game 2 after Miss St- Tulane. Tickets go public 9/18. Let's fill that place up.

Given the timing, is it possible this is a replacement for someone getting booted for the explicit video issue? Might be unrelated but it did make me wonder.