Auburn HC Hugh Freeze tears into SEC referees over disastrous officiating in 24-17 loss vs. Oklahoma 

Auburn coach Hugh Freeze torn into the officials after two mistakes played their role in the Tigers 24-17 defeat to the Oklahoma Sooners on Saturday. This defeat was their first of the season (now with a 3-1 record) and does not help their chances in the SEC this year.

The first of these incidents happened early in the match. During the first quarter, Tigers' cornerback Kayin Lee recovered a fumbled ball into the endzone for a touchdown. However, upon review, it was ruled that the Sooner who initially fumbled the ball never had possession, meaning that the touchdown was taken off the board.

In response to this decision, Freeze said the following to ESPN during the game broadcast:

"I don’t know how it’s not a fumble. I don’t know. Maybe they had a different review upstairs. Looked like he juggled at first, regained, and ran. We stripped it. Thought it should have been a touchdown.”

Another key incident would occur later in the game when Isaiah Sategna III (the same member of the Sooner who fumbled the ball on the earlier incident) scored a touchdown. Subsequent looks at this play by the TV "rules analysts" (someone with no impact on the actual game) found that this score should have not been allowed.

Freeze spoke about this incident during the post game press conference where he said the following:

"They said they didn’t hear us trying to call timeout. We were instructed all offseason about deceptive plays. We’ll see what’s said. I really don’t know what will be said about that."

In all, two potential errors in officiating allowed a touchdown that should have not been and denied the Tigers a score that was initially allowed. These two incidents would go on to have a massive impact on the final score, with the Sooners winning by seven points.

Hugh Freeze on Auburn conceding 13 penalties

However, there were numerous issues with Auburn's gameplay during that Sooners game that they were responsible for that played a role in the defeat. One of these were the large number of penalties the team had against them. This was something that Freeze addressed during his post game interview, saying:

"You just can't, we had 13 penalties. You're just not going to win on the road in this league when you do that. It's like I told our team, I love them, man. I love their competitive spirit. I think this league is so dang tough. There's going to be a lot of teams that lose difficult games in this league. It's just one. We've got to regroup, go back on the road and play another very talented team, but I think we proved today we can play with those talented teams, also."

In the SEC, any mistake can be costly. This is something that the Tigers found out today the hard way.

Question should be asked about some officiating decisions (the Sategna touchdown for example), but at the end the day, it is Auburn who make the errors to allow the Sooners to get into those positions to make the winning moves.

Edited by Ben Tredinnick