GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Mississippi coach Pete Golding is glad his team doesn’t play again for two weeks.
It gives his players extra time to stew over their failures.
The fourth-ranked Rebels, coming off an emotional win against LSU and former Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin, fell behind early and essentially got run off the field in a 52-28 loss to 21st-ranked Florida on Saturday.
It was a huge letdown that left Golding searching for answers.
“I don’t want
them to get this taste out of their mouth. That’s what I told them," said Golding, whose team lost to Miami in the College Football Playoff last season. “I never got the taste out of my mouth from Miami walking off the field. Part of the problem sometimes is we move on too fast.”
Florida gashed Ole Miss early and often, finishing with 302 yards rushing and six touchdowns on the ground. Jadan Baugh ran for 142 yards and three scores, and backup Duke Clark added 126 yards and a score.
It was the fourth consecutive game in which the Rebels allowed at least 140 yards rushing.
“You better have that burning in your gut in order to go fix something,” Golding said. “I think we have guys like that. We don’t have enough guys like that right now. And that was kind of the challenge right there. We get to choose.
“That’s the beautiful thing about this game. You get to choose whether you’re going to go all in and do things right or not.”
Golding challenged his defense during halftime — to no avail. Florida scored touchdowns on five consecutive drives in the second half.
“I think some guys took it, and other guys didn’t, and I think that showed in the second half,” senior linebacker Keaton Thomas said. “I’m going to make it evident, too, to call guys out and let them know that if you don’t want this, then you shouldn’t have come here.”
Ole Miss trailed 10-0 before Heisman Trophy frontrunner Trinidad Chambliss even attempted a pass. Florida scored on the opening possession and then stopped JT Lindsey on a fourth-and-1 from their 35-yard line. Florida kicked a field goal.
The Rebels responded and scored 11 points over a three-minute stretch spanning the second and third quarters. But it was all Florida from there, with the Gators scoring touchdowns on five consecutive possessions.
“That was an old-fashioned butt-whupping,” Golding said.
It didn’t help that Chambliss injured his left thigh on the second drive and spent time between possessions on the exercise bike to stay loose. He completed 25 of 34 passes for 298 yards, with a touchdown, an interception and a fumble. He also ran seven times for a team-high 44 yards and two scores.
“I feel like if we were playing our best ball things might have been different, but that didn’t happen today," Chambliss said.
Golding made it clear to his guys that the loss “does not define your season.”
“The sun is going to come up tomorrow and we are going into a bye week, and we really have to evaluate," he said. "The things we are doing well we have to continue to do well, and we have a lot of issues in all three phases we have to address starting with coaching and playing in order to put a better product on tape because that was a butt-whupping.”
A lopsided loss that included an especially egregious defensive showing.
“I addressed kind of the manhood at halftime a little bit. There was a lack of courage, in my opinion, at times, that we were picking and choosing,” Golding said. “That’s an elite back and he’s a big back, and you’ve got to go chest-to-chest with him whether you like it or not.
“He’s going to stiff-arm (and) you’re going to be on the ground. His missed tackle rate was No. 1 in the NCAA. We watched every one of them. … But that was a big emphasis this week that obviously we did a poor job coaching because we couldn’t get that done.”
___
Sign up for Top 25 poll alerts here, visit the Top 25 here and see AP’s full college football coverage here
