Auburn coach Hugh Freeze considers Missouri coach Eli Drinkwitz one of his closest friends in the Southeastern Conference.
But they will set that aside when No. 19 Missouri (5-1, 1-1) hosts Auburn (2-4, 0-3) on Saturday afternoon in Columbia, Mo.
“I don’t know where we started developing a friendship, but it came pretty naturally,” Freeze said. “I think we’re made of a similar mindset of what coaching should be about and the bigger picture of trying to keep the bigger picture of impacting others as important as the wins and losses — which is very difficult to do.”
Missouri is trying to get back into the College Football Playoff discussion after rolling to a 45-3 victory at UMass last week. Tigers quarterback Brady Cook completed 14 of 19 passes for 219 yards and two touchdowns.
Drinkwitz said he wanted to work more on his team’s passing attack in the third quarter, but receiver Josh Manning went 63 yards on a catch-and-run play to open a series.
“I got on the headsets and told the offensive staff that we weren’t going to run the ball again,” Drinkwitz said. “I wanted to see us develop some chemistry and continuity in the pass game. I didn’t anticipate that we would score on the first play. Which was great, but also disappointing because we wanted to continue to work out the kinks.”
Overall this season, Cook has completed 119 of 184 passes for 1,351 yards and seven touchdowns. He has rushed for 124 yards and four TDs.
The team’s leading rusher, Nate Noel (471 yards, 6.0 average, two TDs), sat out against the Minutemen with a stiff back but should return for Saturday’s game.
Top receiving target Luther Burden III (488 yards from scrimmage, six total touchdowns) exited the UMass game in the third quarter with a shoulder injury but is likely to play against Auburn.
Drinkwitz also said he expects linebacker Triston Newson to return this week but said defensive end Joe Moore III and linebacker Khalil Jacobs will miss the rest of the season with injuries.
Freeze used the bye week ahead of this game to take Auburn back to the basics. Auburn’s most recent game was a 31-13 loss to then-No. 5 Georgia on Oct. 5.
“What is our bread and butter?” he said. “And let’s try to make it look different ways. But we probably don’t need more. Let’s do less and keep doing it better.”
Auburn has suffered a variety of breakdowns in key game situations during a three-game losing streak. Freeze said he hopes the extra week of practice will clean that up as his team works to gain bowl eligibility.
“If we have a critical down, it will be very, very, very, very disheartening and infuriating if another situation happens — on a fourth-and-1 or a third-and-1 — where our kids don’t have a clear understanding of what should happen,” Freeze said.
Auburn’s offense features big-play running back Jarquez Hunter, who has rushed for 528 yards and three touchdowns while averaging 6.8 yards per carry. Freeze said the team needs to get him more carries.
“That’s the frustrating thing with some of our short-yardage deals that have been called and not executed at a high enough level where he actually touches it,” Freeze said. “We’ve got to get that corrected.”
Thorne has completed 77 of 129 passes for 1,238 and 10 touchdowns — but he has suffered six interceptions and 12 sacks.
