What follows is a rough transcript of Hugh Freeze's appearance on "Tiger Talk" Thursday night. This is not meant to be a comprehensive transcript. We try to have fun with it.
• ANDY is Andy Burcham, the official Voice of The Auburn Tigers.
• NOT ANDY is Brad Law, who is not the Official Voice of the Auburn Tigers yet is terrific in his own right.
ANDY points out that Auburn will be back at home: "I just hope it's loud and juiced." He used the word lit.
NOT ANDY asks about practice emphasis: "Just really trying to put the mistakes from the LSU game behind us. Having a passionate, hard working Tuesday, Wednesday, which we did... I think the focus has been really good... Keionte Scott changes our team. He's been back around us this week and he really picks up everyone's spirit... Offensively, obviously just continuing to work on consistency in the passing game."
ANDY asks about the quarterbacks: "We try to judge things based on what we see in practice... there's things that one does really well in practice and there's things that other's do well in practice... I do feel like me made progress, but I feel like we started that last week, but that game got away from us so fast."
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NOT ANDY asks about Brandon Frazier: "It's always good to see guys that we depend upon for a lot of the dirty get in on the action. Our tight ends are critical to what we do."
ANDY asks about Caleb Burton: "Caleb's going to be a rally good player. He's picking up on things. He's one of the better route runners we have... you'll see him in action on Saturday.
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NOT ANDY asks about when he will be locked in to the game: "This year I have been so busy recruiting that I don't get to think about the game until literally -- I get out there with about 30 minutes left in warm ups and it's go time then. I have to recruit so hard right now. There's so many good players coming to our games and I feel like I have meet with them. And it's working, we got another big commitment from one of the top players in the nation. I think that's two this week. I don't have a lot of time. I leave the hotel as soon as we get through with our last meeting. I get to the stadium and I'm locked in a room meeting with families until Tiger Walk. And then I come back and meet again until I just can't. We've got another big group this week... I've said since I got here -- the '24 and '25 class will really tell the story of how fast we can close the gap on the upper echelon in this conference. I think we're off to a good start."
ANDY asks if recruiting is different this year compared to years prior: “So truthfully, when I was the head coach at Ole Miss you didn’t have the number of top guys showing up… you didn’t feel as pressed — there wasn’t many I felt I had to be in a room with. And Liberty was nothing like that… this is quite different.”
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ANDY says that Ole Miss goes for it on fourth down a lot: “They’re very aggressive with fourth downs. Don’t expect that to change. That’s kind of been how they’ve been since Lane has been there.”
NOT ANDY asks for keys: “I’d say time of possession. I’d love for us to get into halftime and have about 2:1 time of possession… then I think we’ve got to look at third downs on both sides. Can we have success on both of those downs? It’ll be critical.
