AUBURN, Ala. – Auburn will return home to Jordan-Hare Stadium this Saturday to face another SEC opponent in Arkansas. The Tigers lead the all-time series, 15-11-1, and have won four of the past five matchups – scoring 35 or more points in all five of those games. Saturday's game is scheduled to kick off at 6:30 p.m. CT and will be televised on SEC Network.
On Tuesday, head coach Gus Malzahn held his weekly press conference and previewed the matchup with the Razorbacks. Here are some of the highlights.
One game at a time
"At the first of the season, from a head coach's standpoint, you get up in front of your team and you give them the plan for the whole year. And you've got to be aware of what you're going to go through. And like I said before, at least we went through it last year and know what it feels like, know what it looks like. But then, you've got to flip the switch, take it one game at a time and have tunnel vision. You can't worry about last week. You can't worry about the next week. You can't worry about how good this team's playing or that team's playing. A lot of teams can't do that. That's our challenge, and that's what we're going to do."
"You know never know how things go. All you can do is control what you can control. One game at a time. In my experience, the teams that are playing their best ball in the second half of the season, those are the teams that have a chance. We've kind of been set up that way, and I think we can do that again, but we got to take it one game at a time."
Freshman playmakers
Running back (JaTarvious Whitlow, Shaun Shivers, Asa Martin)
"Those freshman running backs, every snap they are getting better. They are understanding the blocking scheme, whether it's a gap or zone scheme. You even started to see Boobee [Whitlow] start to slow down a little bit. We've been trying to get him to slow down some and read it. We are still in the early stages of our run game and it's kind of what I said with our offensive line. With the running backs, I'm confident we are going to get better just with the more experience that group has."
Wide receiver (Anthony Schwartz, Seth Williams)
"First of all, they've earned it. Anybody on the field has earned the right to be on the field through practice. You find out a whole lot about players on the field. I think I said that a couple of weeks ago. That's when you really find out about guys. I don't think the moment is too big for either one of those guys. I think both of them are coachable. Both of them are very talented and want to compete."
Arkansas scouting report
"You look at Arkansas – first of all, their head coach, Chad Morris, he's a good friend of mine. But he's an excellent football coach. He's got a staff that is very talented, got some veteran guys that have been in this league a long time. You've got quite a few starters back on offense. They've got quite a few starters back on defense. We expect them to improve. I think back in 2013 when I first took over here, it took three or four games to kind of really get in a rhythm, so we expect to get their best."
Injury update (Will Hastings and Eli Stove)
"At this point right now, our plan was to slowly work those guys back in to see how much confidence they have and how effective they can be. So that was really the plan last week, and we'll continue to go through that. We're always going to do what's best for the individual, as far as that goes. But I thought both of them got a chance to get in there and do some things against a quality opponent."
Greg Ostendorf is a Senior Writer for AuburnTigers.com. Follow him on Twitter: @greg_ostendorf
