Ian Sparks
Football is back in full swing in Oxford as the No. 21 ranked Rebels hosted the Troy Trojans of the Sun Belt Conference on Saturday.
Ole Miss bested the Trojans to open up their season with a solid win. In what was a Rebel debut for many players on the Ole Miss sideline, fans were eager to see the likes of Zach Evans and Jaxson Dart among others in their first game at the Vaught.
Following the success of last season, the Rebels were looking to replicate that with many new faces to start the year. The quarterback battle between Dart and Luke Altmyer has been a running piece of conversation since Dart touched down in Oxford. Alas, Dart was the first to trot out on Saturday afternoon.
However, Dart’s position is not set in stone. “It’s not really fair for us to just pick one (quarterback) because it’s so even,” head coach Lane Kiffin said after the game. “We said we were going to go first with one today and then the other one, Luke (Altmyer) will go first next Saturday.”
Kiffin likened this plan to preseason games in the NFL, a time where many players get chances to impress. On the day, Dart went 18-27 with 154 yards, a touchdown and an interception.
As for the game itself, Ole Miss jumped out to a 21-0 lead, scoring on three of their five drives in the first half. The Rebels established the running game early and quite often, with transfer Ulysses Bentley IV scoring the first points of the day on a slippery touchdown run from a few yards out.
Highly touted transfer running back Zach Evans from Texas Christian University and true freshman running back Quinshon Judkins had wonderful debuts in the Rebel backfield. Evans racked up 133 yards on 20 carries and showed why so many schools were after his signature.
Out of the three, fans knew what both Bentley and Evans could do at the college level. However, many were wondering how Judkins would fare in conjunction with the two. In his first collegiate outing, Judkins had 14 carries and 87 yards with a rushing touchdown to his name. Judkins is 5’11, 210 lbs of pure strength, speed and determination, as felt by the Trojan defenders.
“Quinshon is going crazy,” Evans said postgame. “He’s a monster.”
While it was a rather one-sided first half, the quality in the second half took a dip.
The Rebels only scored seven points in the second half, partly due to fatigue and trying things out with the offense. Yet, Kiffin felt as if they could’ve done much better regardless.
“It was a really good first half, kind of a tale of two games,” Kiffin said. “Offensively, the second half was miserable. Three turnovers including a snap on the ground. That’s really disappointing. The goal was to get to 1-0, but we need to improve a lot.”
On the other side of the ball, the Rebel defense was stingy in their play, allowing just 10 points on the day with four sacks and 10 tackles for loss. While the offensive transfers garnered much of the attention, the transfers on defense showed up and showed out. Most impressive was transfer linebacker Khari Coleman from TCU, who tallied five tackles for loss, including two sacks. Coleman was all over the field for the Rebels, even inducing a three-and-out by himself.
“It was crazy to me that he came on in his first possession and got a three-and-out on his own,” linebacker Troy Brown said. Brown, a fellow transfer linebacker from Central Michigan, had a great game himself in which he tallied 11 total tackles.
As a collective, the Rebel defense played very well, yet similarly to how Kiffin felt about the offense, Brown expressed that they could have been much better.
“We laid down in the second half and didn’t keep our foot on their necks,” Brown said about the team’s performance in the second half.
In their defense, the Trojans had nearly 37 minutes of possession, something that factors greatly when thinking about conditioning and fatigue. Regardless, this team refuses to be complacent with the victory and will get back to work this week. The Rebels turn their attention to Central Arkansas (0-1) who will visit Vaught-Hemingway Stadium next Saturday. The game will be at 6:00 p.m. CDT on SEC Network+.
