By Thomas McKee
Media Relations Assistant
OXFORD, Miss. – The worst part is the wait. After a disappointing 33-20 loss at Auburn last Saturday, Ole Miss head coach Houston Nutt and his Rebel team can’t wait for the chance to get back out on the gridiron and back into the win column.
“We are excited to get back on the field – bottom line,” Nutt said. “The thing I like about basketball is that they play every two or three days and are able to get that bad taste out of their mouths (faster). We want to get back out on the field.”
The Rebels (5-3, 2-3 SEC) get their chance to get back to winning as they take on the Northern Arizona Lumberjacks this evening at 6:30 p.m. inside Vaught-Hemingway Stadium. The game will be televised by CSS and also available on ESPN GamePlan and ESPN360.com.
Ole Miss’s two-game winning streak was snapped last weekend by the Auburn Tigers. The Rebels were hoping to go on a second-half hot streak similar to the one they went on a season ago, as they rattled off six victories in a row to close out the 2008 campaign.
Dexter McCluster carried the offensive load for the Rebels for the second-straight game as he ran for a career-high 186 yards and one score against the Tigers. Nutt and his staff will likely continue to give the 5-foot-9, multi-threat senior plenty of carries the rest of the season.
“Anytime you take Dexter out of the receiving corps, you lose a step,” Nutt said of giving McCluster more touches at tailback. “But we need him in the backfield to give us the best chance to win.”
Another key for Ole Miss will be getting its secondary back on track. After playing well for most of the season and gaining a lot of confidence, the Rebel defensive backs struggled on the Plains.
The Ole Miss secondary gave up 226 passing yards to the Tigers, after giving up a season-high 254 yards in the air the week before against Arkansas. Despite the letdown, Nutt doesn’t believe the unit has lost the confidence it gained throughout the first half of this season.
“Kendrick Lewis, Cassius Vaughn and Marshay Green have played good all year,” Nutt said. “I just know we can play so much better if we play at our highest level. They hate it and we hate it. There isn’t anything we can do about that. We have to correct and we’ve got to go.”
Northern Arizona (5-3, 4-2 Big Sky) enters tonight’s contest coming off a 27-24 upset loss at Sacramento State last weekend. Prior to the loss, the Lumberjacks had reeled off four-straight contests and were ranked as high as No. 22 in the FCS Coaches Poll.
The Lumberjacks are led offensively by former Rebel quarterback, Michael Herrick, who transferred to NAU in the spring of 2008 after spending the 2006 and 2007 seasons in Oxford. The junior quarterback was redshirted at Ole Miss in 2006 as a freshman, and was a member of the scout team in 2007.
“I think I am going to approach this game like I do every other game,” Herrick said of returning to his former school. “There is a little bit of emotion to the game because I used to play there. I am familiar with the place and I know some of the guys on the team.”
The Herrick-led offense ranks eighth in the FCS (438.4 yards per game) and the former Rebel currently stands third in the nation in passing at 309.6 yards per game.
NAU is the second FCS opponent for the Rebels this season. Nutt’s team defeated Southeastern Louisiana 52-6 in its home opener on September 19. Meanwhile, the Lumberjacks are only one of three FCS schools playing two FBS schools this season, as they fell to Arizona 34-17 in their season opener.
