The Auburn Tigers posted arguably their worst performance of the year last Saturday at home to Lane Kiffin and LSU, falling 38-17 at Jordan-Hare Stadium.

It marked the first time Auburn has been blown out in a game, especially on its home turf, in quite some time. It was also Auburn’s first 11 a.m. CDT start time of the season, as each of the previous six games started either in the afternoon or under the lights. 

Head coach Alex Golesh spoke to the media ahead of the Tigers’ trip to Oxford, Miss., to take on Ole Miss this weekend, and he revealed how he’s evaluated Auburn’s process “to a T” since the ugly LSU loss.

“I went back and dissected down, I mean, literally everything from Thursday to kickoff last week. Man, like, where were we off? That’s the thing that I think maybe puzzled me as much as anything because I thought leading up to kickoff, energy was really good,” Golesh said. “Intent was really good. So, go back and (be) uber, uber-critical.”

Auburn’s clash with Ole Miss will be its second consecutive morning kickoff, but it’s set to start nearly an hour later at 11:45 a.m. CDT. However, Golesh still broke down seemingly every minute last week leading up to the LSU game and tried to figure out what exactly went wrong.

“I think the understanding of how fast it gets here is the biggest piece,” Golesh said. “Now, you’re adding a travel component to it, too. It’s just something that we have to, I don’t want to say overcome, but we just have to get used to it.”

Golesh also pointed out that Auburn practices in the morning, so he may not have expected the early kickoff to affect his team as much as it did. But overall, although it’s not ideal, the Tigers must adjust — and they must adjust quickly, as an explosive Ole Miss squad awaits.

“It can’t be about that. We have to be able to go handle it the right way,” Golesh said. “But I dissected it down to a ‘T’ and adjusted a little bit just to make sure our guys are locked in and focused. But ultimately, they have to go play and we have to go coach.”

Golesh said he changed a “little bit” from last week’s process, which included slightly shifting the times of pre-game meetings and meals.

Nonetheless, Auburn will certainly need to gain some sort of boost or advantage this weekend, as the Rebels boast likely the best quarterback in the country in Trinidad Chambliss.

Ole Miss is also coming off an emotional loss to Texas on Saturday, marking its second loss of the season — thus, Pete Golding and company view the Auburn game as a “must-win” and will likely play desperate.

So, no matter the issue Golesh discovered with Auburn’s operations a week ago, the Tigers must find a way not to allow another early start time to affect them against an extremely dangerous Ole Miss team fighting to keep its College Football Playoff hopes alive.