College students, get a year of HawgBeat coverage for just $11.95! Request details via email from your school account (.edu) to andrewhutchinson413@gmail.com.
FAYETTEVILLE — Not only did Arkansas suffer its first loss of the season last week, but it looked bad doing it.
The Razorbacks shot themselves in the foot multiple times in their 37-0 thrashing at the hands of No. 2 Georgia and now they must turn the page to another top-20 road matchup.
Head coach Sam Pittman has said several times this week that his team must bounce back and have a better performance Saturday at No. 17 Ole Miss.
“I think we’ve all - in one realm or another - we’ve gotten the heck kicked out of us at some point in our life, whether it be at home, whether it be physically, whatever it is,” Pittman said. “The only way I know how to do it is you get up and you brush the dirt off, you brush whatever it is, and you go back to work.”
It remains to be seen if Arkansas will experience any sort of hangover from its last game, but the players seem to be receptive to Pittman’s message.
“We've put that in the past,” wide receiver Treylon Burks said. “Georgia is in the past. We're moving on to Ole Miss and preparing for Ole Miss. We're not worried about Georgia at all.”
When he met with the media Monday, Pittman said he hadn’t met with the team to discuss putting the game behind them, but that’s because he doesn’t usually meet with them on Sundays.
As he said, he didn’t want to “make a mountain out of a mole hill” by changing things up.
“If I go totally off and start having meetings with the players and all this stuff, I think I’m sending a message that I’m panicking and I’m not,” Pittman said. “Because we’ve got a good football team and we got our butt kicked by a really good football team.
“We don’t like it and we’re not accepting it, but I’ll be damned if Georgia’s going to make us lose this Ole Miss game.”
Here are a few other notes and tidbits ahead of Saturday’s 11 a.m. CT kickoff…
KJ’s Homecoming
This game will be a homecoming of sorts for Arkansas’ quarterback, as KJ Jefferson went to high school at North Panola in Sardis, Miss., which is less than 45 minutes away from Ole Miss’ campus in Oxford.
He didn’t give an exact number, but Jefferson said he’d have a lot of friends and family in attendance at Vaught-Hemingway Stadium.
“I’ve got a lot of family members coming to the game to watch me play,” Jefferson said. “They’ve never been to a game, so I’m pretty pumped that they’ll be able to make it and come see me play.”
Although the Rebels recruited him, Jefferson indicated he never really considered them because he wanted to leave the state. That’s how the former Rivals250 prospect ended up with the Razorbacks instead.
There’s a lot of excitement surrounding his return to the Magnolia State and his teammates have taken notice this week.
“We had a game down in Dallas that meant the world to me, so I know how much it’s going to mean to him getting back down there,” linebacker Bumper Pool said. “I think he’s ready, he’s excited, and we have a good game plan for him.”
