Vanderbilt will take on the No. 3 team in the SEC in the Ole Miss Rebels this Saturday at Vaught Hemingway Stadium. The Commodores have lost six consecutive games and will look to beat Ole Miss for the first time since 2018. Conversely, Ole Miss has consistently performed strongly throughout this season, most notably against LSU. The constant uncompromising performance from Ole Miss has afforded them an outstanding record of being 6-1.
Vanderbilt will continue to strive to succeed and look to win its third game. Before Saturday’s game, The Hustler interviewed Cameron Larkin, Sports Editor at the Daily Mississippian, Ole Miss’s student newspaper, to provide a preview of what will hopefully be an exciting game.
The Vanderbilt Hustler: How has Jackson Dart been this season?
Cameron Larkin: He’s been surprising in a good way compared to last season. Obviously he didn’t get off on a great note, but he’s been able to take command of the offense, take command of the team and assume a leadership role that a lot of people expected him to take but I don’t think they expected him to take it to this length.
VH: Can Lane Kiffin lead this team to an SEC championship appearance?
CL: I think for sure he has the capability to the way it’s stacking up this season. It might not happen but aside from last season, it seems like he’s been able to put together rosters that can compete to that level. It’s just a matter of getting over that hump this season. Winning that LSU game was a big part of it, because the question was, could he win the big game? And, that game was one of the big ones. So, to see him be able to do that kind of gives people a lot of confidence that he can maybe one day get the SEC championship home.
VH: What makes this Ole Miss team different from last season?
CL: It’s been kind of hard to pinpoint but the fact that they’re able to finish some games where last season they definitely wouldn’t have, namely the Arkansas [and] LSU games this year. A lot of people are pretty confident in saying that Ole Miss could not have won those games. So, it’s just the ability to kind of turn it on when they have to have a good second half, specifically good fourth quarters to close out some games.
VH: Can you describe the environment of Vaught Hemingway stadium?
CL: It’s been — for lack of a better word — electric this season. It all goes back to the LSU game. That was one of the best college football games I’ve ever been to. But that’s one of the most electric environments I think a lot of people have been in, inside Hemingway. It’s kind of been a domino effect since the next week we had Arkansas, and it was just as packed [and] just as exciting. And so, this being our first home game since being on the road and our bye week, I think it’s gonna be a great environment, especially since it’s a night game again.
VH: Do you have a score prediction for the game?
CL: It’s difficult because y’all played Georgia so close. The hope is the offense is able to get going this week. So, I would say somewhere in the realm of 45 to 17.
